[FN#188] True Fellah—"chaff."
[FN#189] Alluding to the well-known superstition, which has often appeared in The Nights, that the first object seen in the morning, such as a crow, a cripple, or a cyclops determines the fortunes of the day. Notices in Eastern literature are as old as the days of the Hitopadesa; and there is a something instinctive in the idea to a race of early risers. At an hour when the senses are most impressionable the aspect of unpleasant spectacles has double effect.
[FN#190] Arab. "Masúkah," the stick used for driving cattle, bâton gourdin (Dozy). Lane applies the word to a wooden plank used for levelling the ground.
[FN#191] i.e. the words I am about to speak to thee.
[FN#192] Arab. "Sahifah," which may mean "page" (Lane) or "book"
(Payne).
[FN#193] Pronounce, "Abussa'ádát" = Father of Prosperities:
Lane imagines that it came from the Jew's daughter being called
"Sa'adat." But the latter is the Jew's wife (Night dcccxxxiii)
and the word in the text is plural.
[FN#194] Arab. "Furkh samak" lit. a fish-chick, an Egyptian vulgarism.
[FN#195] Arab. "Al-Rasif"; usually a river-quay, levée, an embankment. Here it refers to the great dyke which distributed the Tigris-water.
[FN#196] Arab. "Dajlah," see vol. i, p 180. It is evidently the origin of the biblical "Hid-dekel" "Hid" = fierceness, swiftness.
[FN#197] Arab. "Bayáz" a kind of Silurus (S. Bajad, Forsk.) which Sonnini calls Bayatto, Saksatt and Hébedé; also Bogar (Bakar, an ox). The skin is lubricous, the flesh is soft and insipid and the fish often grows to the size of a man. Captain Speke and I found huge specimens in the Tangany ika Lake.