[55]. The lines occur in vol. ii. [331]: I have quoted Mr. Payne. Here they are singularly out of place.
[56]. Not the “green gown” of Anglo-India i.e. a white ball-dress with blades of grass sticking to it in consequence of a “fall backwards.”
[57]. These lines occur in vol. i. [219]: I have borrowed from Torrens (p. 219).
[58]. The appearance of which ends the fast and begins the Lesser Festival. See vol. i. [84].
[59]. See note, vol. i. [84], for notices of the large navel; much appreciated by Easterns.
[60]. Arab. “Shá’ir Al-Walahán” = the love-distraught poet; Lane has “a distracted poet.” My learned friend Professor Aloys Sprenger has consulted, upon the subject of Al-Walahán the well-known Professor of Arabic at Halle, Dr. Thorbeck, who remarks that the word (here as further on) must be an adjective, mad, love-distraught, not a “lakab” or poetical cognomen. He generally finds it written Al-Shá’ir al-Walahán (the love-demented poet) not Al-Walahán al-Shá’ir = Walahán the Poet. Note this burst of song after the sweet youth falls in love: it explains the cause of verse-quotation in The Nights, poetry being the natural language of love and battle.
[61]. “Them” as usual for “her.”
[62]. Here Lane proposes a transposition, for “Wa-huwá (and he) fí ’l-hubbi,” to read “Fi ’l-hubbi wa huwa (wa-hwa);” but the latter is given in the Mac. Edit.
[63]. For the pun in “Sabr” = aloe or patience. See vol. i. [138]. In Herr Landberg (i. 93) we find a misunderstanding of the couplet—
Aw’ákibu s-sabri (Kála ba’azuhum)