[FN#151] I have not attempted to order this marvellous confusion of metaphors so characteristic of The Nights and the exigencies of Al-Saj'a = rhymed prose.
[FN#152] Here and elsewhere I omit the "kála (dice Turpino)" of the original: Torrens preserves "Thus goes the tale" (which it only interrupts). This is simply letter-wise and sense-foolish.
[FN#153] Of this worthy more at a future time.
[FN#154] i.e., sealed with the Kazi or legal authority's seal of office.
[FN#155] "Nothing for nothing" is a fixed idea with the Eastern woman: not so much for greed as for a sexual point d' honneur when dealing with the adversary—man.
[FN#156] She drinks first, the custom of the universal East, to show that the wine she had bought was unpoisoned. Easterns, who utterly ignore the "social glass" of Western civilisation drink honestly to get drunk; and, when far gone are addicted to horse-play (in Pers. "Badmasti" = le vin mauvais) which leads to quarrels and bloodshed. Hence it is held highly irreverent to assert of patriarchs, prophets and saints that they "drank wine;" and Moslems agree with our "Teatotallers" in denying that, except in the case of Noah, inebriatives are anywhere mentioned in Holy Writ.
[FN#157] Arab. "Húr al-Ayn," lit. (maids) with eyes of lively white and black, applied to the virgins of Paradise who will wive with the happy Faithful. I retain our vulgar "Houri," warning the reader that it is a masc. for a fem. ("Huríyah") in Arab, although accepted in Persian, a genderless speach.
[FN#158] Arab. "Zambúr," whose head is amputated in female circumcision. See Night cccclxxiv.
[FN#159] Ocymum basilicum noticed in Introduction, the bassilico of Boccaccio iv. 5. The Book of Kalilah and Dimnah represents it as "sprouting with something also whose smell is foul and disgusting and the sower at once sets to gather it and burn it with fire." (The Fables of Bidpai translated from the later Syriac version by I. G. N. Keith-Falconer, etc., etc., etc., Cambridge University Press, 1885). Here, however, Habk is a pennyroyal (mentha puligium), and probably alludes to the pecten.
[FN#160] i. e. common property for all to beat.