[106]. Arab. “Farkalah,” φραγέλλιον from flagellum; cattle-whip with leathern thongs. Lane, M.E.; Fleischer Glos. 83–84; Dozy s.v.
[107]. This clause is supplied to make sense.
[108]. i.e. to crucify him by nailing him to an upright board.
[109]. i.e. a native of the Hauran, Job’s country east of Damascus, now a luxuriant waste, haunted only by the plundering Badawin and the Druzes of the hills, who are no better; but its stretches of ruins and league-long swathes of stone over which the vine was trained, show what it has been and what it will be again when the incubus of Turkish mis-rule shall be removed from it. Herr Schuhmacher has lately noted in the Hauran sundry Arab traditions of Job; the village Nawá, where he lived: the Hammam ’Ayyúb, where he washed his leprous skin; the Dayr Ayyúb, a monastery said to date from the third century; and the Makan Ayyub at Al-Markáz, where the semi-mythical patriarch and his wife are buried. The “Rock of Job,” covered by a mosque, is a basaltic monolith 7 feet high by 4, and is probably connected with the solar worship of the old Phœnicians.
[110]. This habit “torquere mero,” was a favourite with the mediæval Arabs. Its effect varies greatly with men’s characters, making some open-hearted and communicative, and others more cunning and secretive than in the normal state. So far it is an excellent detection of disposition, and many a man who passes off well when sober has shown himself in liquor a rank snob. Among the lower orders it provokes what the Persians call Bad-mastí (le vin méchant): see Pilgrimage iii. 385.
[111]. This mystery is not unfamiliar to the modern “spiritualist;” and all Eastern tongues have a special term for the mysterious Voice. See vol. i. 142.
[112]. Arab. “Alaykum”: addressed to a single person. This is generally explained by the “Salam” reaching the ears of Invisible Controuls, and even the Apostle. We find the words cruelly distorted in the Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile (partly translated by John E. Taylor, London: Bogue, 1848), “The Prince, coming up to the old woman heard an hundred Licasalemme,” p. 383.
[113]. Arab. “Al-Zalamah”; the policeman: see vol. vi. 214.
[114]. i.e. in my punishment.
[115]. i.e. on Doomsday thou shalt get thy deserts.