[408]. Arab. “Yaum al-Jum’ah” = Assembly-day, Friday: see vol. vi. 120.
[409]. A regular Badawi remedy. This Artemisia (Arab. Shayh), which the Dicts. translate “wormwood of Pontus,” is the sweetest herb of the Desert, and much relished by the wild men: see my “Pilgrimage,” vol. i. 228. The Finnish Arabist Wallin, who died Professor of Arabic at Helsingfors, speaks of a “Faráshat al-Shayh” = a carpet of wormwood.
[410]. “Sáhibi-h,” the masculine; because, as the old grammar tells us, that gender is more worthy than the feminine.
[411]. i.e. his strength was in the gold: see vol. i. 340.
[412]. Arab. “Haysumah” = smooth stones (water-rounded?).
[413]. For “his flesh was crushed upon his bones,” a fair specimen of Arab. metonomy-cum-hyperbole. In the days when Mr. John Bull boasted of his realism versus Gallic idealism, he “got wet to the skin” when M. Jean Crapaud was mouillé jusqu’aux os.
For the Angels supposed to haunt a pure and holy well, and the trick played by Ibn Túmart, see Ibn Khaldun’s Hist. of the Berbers, vol. ii. 575.
[414]. Here begins the second tale which is a weak replica of Galland’s “Two Sisters,” &c.
[415]. This is the usual term amongst savages and barbarians, and during that period the father has no connection with the mother. Civilisation has abolished this natural practice which is observed by all the lower animals and has not improved human matters. For an excellent dissertation on the subject see the letter on Polygamy by Mrs. Belinda M. Pratt, in “The City of the Saints,” p. 525.
[416]. In text “Kuwayyis,” dim. of “Kayyis,” and much used in Egypt as an adj. = “pretty,” “nice” and an adv. “well,” “nicely.” See s. v. Spitta Bey’s Glossary to Contes Arabes Modernes. The word is familiar to the travellers in the Nile-valley.