[119]. In the Mac. Edit. “Soldiers of Al-Daylam” i.e. warlike as the Daylamites or Medes. See vol. ii. [94].
[120]. Bilkís, it will be remembered, is the Arab. name of the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon. In Abyssinia she is termed Kebra zá negest or zá makadá, the latter (according to Ferdinand Werne’s “African Wanderings,” Longmans, 1852) being synonymous with Ityopia or Habash (Ethiopia or Abyssinia.)
[121]. Arab. “Dakkah,” which Lane translates by “settee.”
[122]. Arab. “Ambar al-Khám,” the latter word (raw) being pure Persian.
[123]. The author neglects to mention the ugliest part of old-womanhood in the East, long empty breasts like tobacco-pouches. In youth the bosom is beautifully high, arched and rounded, firm as stone to the touch, with the nipples erect and pointing outwards. But after the girl-mother’s first child (in Europe le premier embellit) all changes. Nature and bodily power have been overtasked; then comes the long suckling at the mother’s expense: the extension of the skin and the enlargement of its vessels are too sudden and rapid for the diminished ability of contraction and the bad food aids in the continual consumption of vitality. Hence, among Eastern women age and ugliness are synonymous. It is only in the highest civilisation that we find the handsome old woman.
[124]. The name has occurred in the Knightly tale of King Omar and his sons vol. ii. [269]. She is here called Mother of Calamities, but in p. 123, vol. iv. of the Mac. Edit, she becomes “Lady (Zát) al-Dawáhi.” It will be remembered that the title means calamitous to the foe.
[125]. By this address she assured him that she had no design upon his chastity. In Moslem lands it is always advisable to accost a strange woman, no matter how young, with, “Yá Ummí!” = O my mother. This is pledging one’s word, as it were, not to make love to her.
[126]. Apparently the Wakites numbered their Islands as the Anglo-Americans do their streets. For this they have been charged with “want of imagination”; but the custom is strictly classical. See at Pompeii “Reg (io) I; Ins (ula) I, Via Prima, Secunda,” etc.
[127]. These are the Puellæ Wakwakienses of whom Ibn Al-Wardi relates after an ocular witness, “Here too is a tree which bears fruits like women who have fair faces and are hung by their hair. They come forth from integuments like large leathern bags (calabash-gourds?) and when they sense air and sun they cry “Wak! Wak!” (God! God!) till their hair is cut, and when it is cut they die; and the islanders understand this cry wherefrom they augur ill.” The Ajáib al-Hind (chapt. xv.) places in Wak-land the Samandal, a bird which enters the fire without being burnt evidently the Egyptian “Pi-Benni,” which the Greeks metamorphised to “Phœnix.” It also mentions a hare-like animal, now male then female; and the Somal behind Cape Guardafui tell the same tale of their Cynhyænas.
[128]. i.e. I will keep thee as though thou wert the apple of my eye.