[406]. Among Moslems husbands are divided into three species; (1) of “Bahr” who is married for love; (2) of “Dahr,” for defence against the world, and (3) of “Mahr” for marriage-settlements (money). Master Obayd was an unhappy compound of the two latter; but he did not cease to be a man of honour.
[407]. The Mac. Edit. here is a mass of blunders and misprints.
[408]. The Mac. Edit. everywhere calls her “Sabiyah” = the young lady and does not mention her name Halímah = the Mild, the Gentle till the cmlxxivth Night. I follow Mr. Payne’s example by introducing it earlier into the story, as it avoids vagueness and repetition of the indefinite.
[409]. Arab. “Adím al-Zauk,” = without savour, applied to an insipid mannerless man as “bárid” (cold) is to a fool. “Ahl Zauk” is a man of pleasure, a voluptuary, a hedonist.
[410]. Arab. “Finján” the egg-shell cups from which the Easterns still drink coffee.
[411]. Arab. “Awáshik” a rare word, which Dozy translates “osselet” (or osselle) and Mr. Payne, “hucklebones,” concerning which he has obliged me with this note. Chambaud renders osselet by “petit os avec lequel les enfants jouent.” Hucklebone is the hip-bone but in the plural it applies to our cockals or cockles: Latham gives “hucklebone,” (or cockal), one of the small vertebræ of the coccygis, and Littleton translates “Talus,” a hucklebone, a bone to play with like a dye, a play called cockal. (So also in Rider). Hucklebones and knucklebones are syn.: but the latter is modern and liable to give a false idea, besides being tautological. It has nothing to do with the knuckles and derives from the German “Knöchel” (dialectically Knöchelein) a bonelet.
[412]. For ablution after sleep and before prayer. The address of the slave-girl is perfectly natural; in a Moslem house we should hear it this day nor does it show the least sign of “frowardness.”
[413]. The perfect stupidity of the old wittol is told with the driest Arab humour.
[414]. This is a rechauffé of the Language of Signs in “Azíz and Azízah” vol. ii. [302].
[415]. In the Mac. Edit. “Yá Fulánah” = O certain person.