[FN#6] Arab. "Rubb"=syrup a word Europeanised by the "Rob
Laffecteur."
[FN#7] The Septentriones or four oxen and their wain.
[FN#8] The list fatally reminds us of "astronomy and the use of the globes" . . . "Shakespeare and the musical glasses."
[FN#9] The octave occurs in Night xv. I quote Torrens (p. 360) by way of variety.
[FN#10] A courteous formula of closing with the offer.
[FN#11] To express our "change of climate" Easterns say, "change of water and air," water coming first.
[FN#12] "The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night" (Psalm cxxi. 6). Easterns still believe in the blighting effect of the moon's rays, which the Northerners of Europe, who view it under different conditions, are pleased to deny. I have seen a hale and hearty Arab, after sitting an hour in the moonlight, look like a man fresh from a sick bed; and I knew an Englishman in India whose face was temporarily paralysed by sleeping with it exposed to the moon.
[FN#13] The negroids and negroes of Zanzibar.
[FN#14] i.e. Why not make thy heart as soft as thy sides! The converse of this was reported at Paris during the Empire, when a man had by mistake pinched a very high personage: "Ah, Madame! if your heart be as hard as (what he had pinched) I am a lost man."
[FN#15] "Na'íman" is said to one after bathing or head-shaving: the proper reply, for in the East every sign of ceremony has its countersign, is "Allah benefit thee!" (Pilgrimage i. 11, iii. 285; Lane M. E. chaps. viii.; Caussin de Perceval's Arabic Grammar, etc., etc.) I have given a specimen (Pilgrimage i., 122) not only of sign and countersign, but also of the rhyming repartee which rakes love. Hanien ! (pleasant to thee! said when a man drinks). Allah pleasure thee (Allah yuhanník which Arnauts and other ruffians perverted to Allah yaník, Allah copulate with thee); thou drinkest for ten! I am the cock and thou art the hen! (i.e. a passive catamite) Nay, I am the thick one (the penis which gives pleasure) and thou art the thin! And so forth with most unpleasant pleasantries.