[FN#317] Alluding to the popular fancy of the rain-drop which becomes a pearl.
[FN#318] Arab. "Ghází"=one who fights for the faith.
[FN#319] i.e. people of different conditions.
[FN#320] The sudden change appears unnatural to Europeans; but an Eastern girl talking to a strange man in a garden is already half won. The beauty, however, intends to make trial of her lover's generosity before yielding.
[FN#321] These lines have occurred in the earlier part of the
Night: I quote Mr. Payne for variety.
[FN#322] Arab. "Al-Sháh mát"=the King is dead, Pers. and Arab. grotesquely mixed: Europeans explain "Checkmate" in sundry ways, all more or less wrong.
[FN#323] Cheating (Ghadr) is so common that Easterns who have no tincture of Western civilisation look upon it not only as venial but laudable when one can take advantage of a simpleton. No idea of "honour" enters into it. Even in England the old lady whist-player of the last generation required to be looked after pretty closely—if Mr. Charles Dickens is to be trusted.
[FN#324] Arab. "Al-Gháliyah," whence the older English Algallia.
See vol. i., 128. The Voyage of Linschoten, etc. Hakluyt Society
MDCCCLXXXV., with notes by my learned friend the late Arthur Coke
Burnell whose early death was so sore a loss to Oriental
students.
[FN#325] A favourite idiom, "What news bringest thou?" ("O
Asám!" Arab. Prov. ii. 589) used by Háris bin Amrú, King of
Kindah, to the old woman Asám whom he had sent to inspect a girl
he purposed marrying.
[FN#326] Amongst the Jews the Arab Salám becomes "Shalúm" and a
Jewess would certainly not address this ceremonial greeting to a
Christian. But Eastern storytellers care little for these
minutić; and the "Adornment of Qualities," was not by birth a
Jewess as the sequel will show.