That thy frozen bosom bears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
Are of those that April wears.”
[436]. Easterns are right in regarding a sleepy languorous look as one of the charms of women, and an incitement to love because suggestive only of bed. Some men also find the same pleasure in a lacrymose expression of countenance, seeming always to call for consolation: one of the most successful women I know owes her exceptional good fortune to this charm.
[437]. Arab. “Hájib,” eyebrow or chamberlain; see vol. iii. 233. The pun is classical used by a host of poets including Al-Harírí.
[438]. Arab. “Tarfah.” There is a Tarfia Island in the Guadalquivir and in Gibraltar a “Tarfah Alto” opposed to “Tarfah bajo.” But it must not be confounded with Tarf = a side, found in the Maroccan term for “The Rock” Jabal al-Tarf = Mountain of the Point (of Europe).
[439]. For Solomon and his flying carpet see vol. iii. 267.
[440]. Arab. “Bilád al-Maghrib (al-Aksa,” in full) = the Farthest Land of the setting Sun, shortly called Al-Maghrib and the people “Maghribi.” The earliest occurrence of our name Morocco or Marocco I find in the “Marákiyah” of Al-Mas’udi (iii. 241), who apparently applies it to a district whither the Berbers migrated.
[441]. The necklace-pearls are the cup-bearer’s teeth.
[442]. In these unregenerate days they would often be summoned to the houses of the royal family; but now they had “got religion” and, becoming freed women, were resolved to be “respectable.” In not a few Moslem countries men of wealth and rank marry professional singers who, however loose may have been their artistic lives, mostly distinguish themselves by decency of behaviour often pushed to the extreme of rigour. Also jeune coquette, vieille dévote, is a rule of the world, Eastern and Western.