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[ In the Text "Rísah," copyist's error for "Ríshah" = a thread, a line: it afterwards proves to be an ornament for a falcon's neck. [I cannot bring myself to adopt here the explanation of "Ríshah" as a string instead of its usual meaning of "feather," "plume." My reasons are the following: 1. The youth sets it upon his head; that is, I suppose, his cap, or whatever his head-gear may be, which seems a more appropriate place for a feather than for a necklace. 2. Further on, Night cdxxx., it is said that the Prince left the residence of his second spouse in search (talíb) of the city of the bird. If the word "Ríshah," which, in the signification of thread, is Persian, had been sufficiently familiar to an Arab to suggest, as a matter of course, a bird's necklace, and hence the bird itself, we would probably find a trace of this particular meaning, if not in other Arabic books, at least in Persian writers or dictionaries; but here the word "Ríshah," by some pronounced "Reshah" with the Yá majhúl, never occurs in connection with jewels; it means fringe, filament, fibre. On the other hand, the suggestion of the bird presents itself quite naturally at the sight of the feather. 3. Ib. p. 269 the youth requests the old man to tell him concerning the "Tayrah allazí Rísh-há (not Rishat-há) min Ma'ádin," which, I believe, can only be rendered by: the bird whose plumage is of precious stones. The "Ríshah" itself was said to be "min Zumurrud wa Lúlú," of emeralds and pearls; and the cage will be "min Ma'ádin wa Lúlú," of precious stones and pearls, in all which cases the use of the preposition "min" points more particularly to the material of which the objects are wrought than the mere Izáfah. The wonderfulness of the bird seems therefore rather to consist in his jewelled plumage than the gift of speech or other enchanting qualities, and I would take it for one of those costly toys, in imitation of trees and animals, in which Eastern princes rejoice, and of which we read so many descriptions, not only in books of fiction, but even in historical works. If it were a live-bird of the other kind, he would probably have put in his word to expose the false brothers of the Prince.?St.]
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[ This is conjectural: the text has a correction which is hardly legible. [I read: "Wa lákin hú ajmalu min-hum bi-jamálin mufritin, lakinnahu matrúdun hú wa ummu-hu" = "and yet he was more beautiful than they with surpassing beauty, but he was an outcast, he and his mother," as an explanation, by way of parenthesis, for their daring to treat him so shamefully.?St.]
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[ The venerable myth of Andromeda and Perseus (who is Horus in disguise) brought down to Saint George (his latest descendant), the Dragon (Typhon) and the fair Saba in the "Seven Champions of Christendom." See my friend M. Clermont Ganneau's Horus et Saint-Georges; Mr. J. R. Anderson's "Saint Mark's Rest; the Place of Dragons;" and my "Book of the Sword," chapt. ix.]
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[ i.e. there was a great movement and confusion.]
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[ [In the text 'Afár, a word frequently joined with "Ghubár," dust, for the sake of emphasis; hence we will find in Night ccccxxix. the verb "yu'affiru," he was raising a dust-cloud.?St.]