[FN#372] A neat and characteristic touch: the wilful beauty eats and drinks before she thinks of her lover. Alas for Masrur married.
[FN#373] The unfortunate Jew, who seems to have been a model husband (Orientally speaking), would find no pity with a coffee-house audience because he had been guilty of marrying a Moslemah. The union was null and void therefore the deliberate murder was neither high nor petty treason. But, The Nights, though their object is to adorn a tale, never deliberately attempt to point a moral and this is one of their many charms.
[FN#374] These lines have repeatedly occurred. I quote Mr.
Payne.
[FN#375] i.e. by the usual expiation. See vol. {ii. 186}.
[FN#376] Arab. "Shammirí"=up and ready!
[FN#377] I borrow the title from the Bresl. Edit. x. 204. Mr. Payne prefers "Ali Noureddin and the Frank King's Daughter." Lane omits also this tale because it resembles Ali Shar and Zumurrud (vol. iv. 187) and Alá al-Din Abu al-Shámát (vol. iv. 29), "neither of which is among the text of the collection." But he has unconsciously omitted one of the highest interest. Dr. Bacher (Germ. Orient. Soc.) finds the original in Charlemagne's daughter Emma and his secretary Eginhardt as given in Grimm's Deutsche Sagen. I shall note the points of resemblance as the tale proceeds. The correspondence with the King of France may be a garbled account of the letters which passed between Harun al-Rashid and Nicephorus, "the Roman dog."
[FN#378] Arab. "Allaho Akbar," the Moslem slogan or war-cry. See vol. ii. 89.
[FN#379] The gate-keeper of Paradise. See vol. iii. 15, 20.
[FN#380] Negroes. Vol. iii. 75.
[FN#381] Arab. "Nakat," with the double meaning of to spot and to handsel especially dancing and singing women; and, as Mr. Payne notes in this acceptation it is practically equivalent to the English phrase "to mark (or cross) the palm with silver." I have translated "Anwá" by Pleiads; but it means the setting of one star and simultaneous rising of another foreshowing rain. There are seven Anwá (plur. of nawa) in the Solar year viz. Al-Badri (Sept.-Oct.); Al-Wasmiyy (late autumn and December); Al-Waliyy (to April); Al-Ghamír (June); Al-Busriyy (July); Bárih al-Kayz (August) and Ahrák al-Hawá extending to September 8. These are tokens of approaching rain, metaphorically used by the poets to express "bounty". See Preston's Hariri (p. 43) and Chenery upon the Ass. of the Banu Haram.