[FN#651] Noting how sharp-eared the blind become.
[FN#652] The blind in Egypt are notorious for insolence and violence, fanaticism and rapacity. Not a few foreigners have suffered from them (Pilgrimage i., 148). In former times many were blinded in infancy by their mothers, and others blinded themselves to escape conscription or honest hard work. They could always obtain food, especially as Mu'ezzins and were preferred because they could not take advantage of the minaret by spying into their neighbours' households. The Egyptian race is chronically weak-eyed, the effect of the damp hot climate of the valley, where ophthalmia prevailed even during the pre-Pharaohnic days. The great Sesostris died stone-blind and his successor lost his sight for ten years (Pilgrimage ii., 176). That the Fellahs are now congenitally weak-eyed, may be seen by comparing them with negroes imported from Central Africa. Ophthalmia rages, especially during the damp season, in the lower Nile-valley; and the best cure for it is a fortnight's trip to the Desert where, despite glare, sand and wind, the eye readily recovers tone.
[FN#653] i.e., with kicks and cuffs and blows, as is the custom. (Pilgrimage i., 174.)
[FN#654] Arab. Káid (whence "Alcayde") a word still much used in North Western Africa.
[FN#655] Arab. "Sullam" = lit. a ladder; a frame-work of sticks, used by way of our triangles or whipping-posts.
[FN#656] This is one of the feats of Al-Símiyá = white magic; fascinating the eyes. In Europe it has lately taken the name of "Electro-biology."
[FN#657] again by means of the "Símiyá" or power of fascination possessed by the old scoundrel.
[FN#658] A formula for averting "Al-Ayn," the evil eye. It is always unlucky to meet a one-eyed man, especially the first thing in the morning and when setting out on any errand. The idea is that the fascinated one will suffer from some action of the physical eye. Monoculars also are held to be rogues: so the Sanskrit saying "Few one-eyed men be honest men."
[FN#659] Al-Nashshár from Nashr = sawing: so the fiddler in Italian is called the "village-saw" (Sega del villaggio). He is the Alnaschar of the Englished Galland and Richardson. The tale is very old. It appears as the Brahman and the Pot of Rice in the Panchatantra; and Professor Benfey believes (as usual with him) that this, with many others, derives from a Buddhist source. But I would distinctly derive it from Æsop's market-woman who kicked over her eggs, whence the Lat. prov. Ante victoriam canere triumphum = to sell the skin before you have caught the bear. In the "Kalilah and Dimnah" and its numerous offspring it is the "Ascetic with his Jar of oil and honey;" in Rabelais (i., 33) Echephron's shoemaker spills his milk, and so La Perette in La Fontaine. See M. Max Muller's "Chips," (vol. iii., appendix) The curious reader will compare my version with that which appears at the end of Richardson's Arabic Grammar (Edit. Of 1811): he had a better, or rather a fuller MS. (p. 199) than any yet printed.
[FN#660] Arab. "Atr" = any perfume, especially oil of roses; whence our word "Ottar,' through the Turkish corruption.