[243]. Arab. “Liallá” (i.e. li, an, lá) lest; but printed here and elsewhere with the yá as if it were “laylan,” = for a single night.
[244]. i.e. if my death be fated to befal to-day, none may postpone it to a later date.
[245]. Arab. “Dustí”: so the ceremony vulgarly called “Doseh” and by the Italo-Egyptians “Dosso,” the riding over disciples’ backs by the Shaykh of the Sa’diyah Darwayshes (Lane M.E. chapt. xxv.) which took place for the last time at Cairo in 1881.
[246]. In Chavis and Cazotte she conjures him “by the great Maichonarblatha Sarsourat” (Miat wa arba’at ashar Súrat) = the 114 chapters of the Alcoran.
[247]. I have noted that Moslem law is not fully satisfied without such confession which, however, may be obtained by the bastinado. It is curious to compare English procedure with what Moslem would be in such a case as that of the famous Tichborne Claimant. What we did need hardly be noticed. An Arab judge would in a case so suspicious at once have applied the stick and in a quarter of an hour would have settled the whole business; but then what about the “Devil’s own,” the lawyers and lawyers’ fees? And he would have remarked that the truth is not less true because obtained by such compulsory means.
[248]. The Hudhud, so called from its cry “Hood! Hood!” It is the Lat. upupa, Gr. ἔποψ from its supposed note epip or upup; the old Egyptian Kukufa; Heb. Dukiphath and Syriac Kikuphá (Bochart Hierozoicon, part ii. 347). The Spaniards call it Gallo de Marzo (March-Cock) from its returning in that month, and our old writers “lapwing” (Deut. xiv. 18). This foul-feeding bird derives her honours from chapt. xxvii. of the Koran (q.v.), the Hudhud was sharp-sighted and sagacious enough to discover water underground which the devils used to draw after she had marked the place by her bill.
[249]. Here the vocative Yá is designedly omitted in poetical fashion (e.g., Khaliliyya—my friend!) to show the speaker’s emotion. See p. 113 of Captain A. Lockett’s learned and curious work the “Miet Amil” (= Hundred Regimens), Calcutta, 1814.
[250]. The story-teller introduces this last instance with considerable art as a preface to the dénoûement.
[251]. See Chavis and Cazotte “Story of the King of Haram and the slave.”
[252]. i.e. men caught red-handed.