[438]. This is not exaggerated. When at Hebron I saw the biblical spectacle of two men carrying a huge bunch slung to a pole, not so much for the weight as to keep the grapes from injury.
[439]. The Mac. and Bul. Edits. add, “and with him a host of others after his kind”; but these words are omitted by the Bresl. Edit. and apparently from the sequel there was only one Ghul-giant.
[440]. Probably alluding to the most barbarous Persian practice of plucking or tearing out the eyes from their sockets. See Sir John Malcolm’s description of the capture of Kirmán and Morier (in Zohrab, the hostage) for the wholesale blinding of the Asterabadian by the Eunuch-King Agha Mohammed Shah. I may note that the mediæval Italian practice called bacinare, or scorching with red-hot basins, came from Persia.
[441]. Arab. “Laban” as opposed to “Halíb”: in Night dcclxxiv (infra p. [365]) the former is used for sweet milk, and other passages could be cited. I have noted that all galaktophagi, or milk-drinking races, prefer the artificially soured to the sweet, choosing the fermentation to take place outside rather than inside their stomachs. Amongst the Somal I never saw man, woman or child drink a drop of fresh milk; and they offered considerable opposition to our heating it for coffee.
[442]. Arab. Tákah not “an aperture” as Lane has it, but an arched hollow in the wall.
[443]. In Trébutien (ii. 168) the cannibal is called “Goul Eli-Fenioun” and Von Hammer remarks, “There is no need of such likeness of name to prove that all this episode is a manifest imitation of the adventures of Ulysses in Polyphemus’ cave; * * * and this induces the belief that the Arabs have been acquainted with the poems of Homer.” Living intimately with the Greeks they could not have ignored the Iliad and the Odyssey: indeed we know by tradition that they had translations, now apparently lost. I cannot however, accept Lane’s conjecture that “the story of Ulysses and Polyphemus may have been of Eastern origin.” Possibly the myth came from Egypt, for I have shown that the opening of the Iliad bears a suspicious likeness to the proem of Pentaur’s Epic.
[444]. Arab. Shakhtúr.
[445]. In the Bresl. Edit. the ship is not wrecked but lands Sa’id in safety.
[446]. So in the Shah-nameh the Símurgh-bird gives one of her feathers to her protégé Zál which he will throw into the fire when she is wanted.
[447]. Bresl. Edit. Al-Zardakhánát Arab. plur. of Zarad-Khánah, a bastard word = armoury, from Arab. Zarad (hauberk) and Pers. Khánah = house etc.