The Book Of The Thousand Nights And A Night, Vol 1 Page-347

The Book Of The Thousand Nights And A Night, Vol 1

A plain and literal translation of the arabian nights entertainments

the “Pombe.” I have given an account of the manufacture in The Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. ii., p. 286. There are other preparations, Umm-bulbul (mother nightie gale), Dinz�yah and S�biyah, for which I must refer to the Shaykh El-Tounsy. [FN#124] There is a terrible truth in this satire, which reminds us of the noble dame who preferred to her handsome husband the palefrenier laid, ord et inf�me of Queen Margaret of Navarre (Heptameron No. xx.). We have all known women who sacrificed everything despite themselves, as it were, for the most worthless of men. The world stares and scoffs and blames and understands nothing. There is for every woman one man and one only in whose slavery she is “ready to sweep the floor.” Fate is mostly opposed to her meeting him but, when she does, adieu husband and children, honour and religion, life and “soul.” Moreover Nature (human) commands the union of contrasts, such as fair and foul, dark and light, tall and short; otherwise mankind would be like the canines, a race of extremes, dwarf as toy-terriers, giants like mastiffs, bald as Chinese “remedy dogs,” or hairy as Newfoundlands. The famous Wilkes said only a half truth when he backed himself, with an hour s start, against the handsomest man in England; his uncommon and remarkable ugliness (he was, as the Italians say, un bel brutto) was the highest recommendation in the eyes of very beautiful women. [FN#125] Every Moslem burial-ground has a place of the kind where honourable women may sit and weep unseen by the multitude. These visits are enjoined by the Apostle:—Frequent the cemetery, ‘twill make you think of futurity! Also:—Whoever visiteth the graves of his parents (or one of them) every Friday, he shall be written a pious son, even though he might have been in the world, before that, a disobedient. (Pilgrimage, ii., 71.) The buildings resemble our European “mortuary chapels.” Said, Pasha of Egypt, was kind enough to erect one on the island off Suez, for the “use of English ladies who would like shelter whilst weeping and wailing for their dead.” But I never heard that any of the ladles went there.