[188]. True Fellah-“chaff.”
[189]. Alluding to the well-known superstition, which has often appeared in The Nights, that the first object seen in the morning, such as a crow, a cripple, or a cyclops determines the fortunes of the day. Notices in Eastern literature are as old as the days of the Hitopadesa; and there is a something instinctive in the idea to a race of early risers. At an hour when the senses are most impressionable the aspect of unpleasant spectacles has double effect.
[190]. Arab. “Masúkah,” the stick used for driving cattle, bâton gourdin (Dozy). Lane applies the word to a wooden plank used for levelling the ground.
[191]. i.e. the words I am about to speak to thee.
[192]. Arab. “Sahífah,” which may mean “page” (Lane) or “book” (Payne).
[193]. Pronounce, “Abussa’ádát” = Father of Prosperities: Lane imagines that it came from the Jew’s daughter being called “Sa’adat.” But the latter is the Jew’s wife (Night dcccxxxiii) and the word in the text is plural.
[194]. Arab. “Furkh samak” lit. a fish-chick, an Egyptian vulgarism.
[195]. Arab. “Al-Rasíf”; usually a river-quay, levée, an embankment. Here it refers to the great dyke which distributed the Tigris-water.
[196]. Arab. “Dajlah,” see vol. i, p. [180]. It is evidently the origin of the biblical “Hid-dekel” “Hid” = fierceness, swiftness.
[197]. Arab. “Bayáz” a kind of Silurus (S. Bajad, Forsk.) which Sonnini calls Bayatto, Saksatt and Hébedé; also Bogar (Bakar, an ox). The skin is lubricous, the flesh is soft and insipid and the fish often grows to the size of a man. Captain Speke and I found huge specimens in the Tanganyika Lake.