Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/511

 Reviews. 469

"// shews, that the ki?ig is Christ, and the hungry dog is the race of men and the clean bread (is) his grace and command and his holy body. And Satan shadows out before our eyes {i.e., deceit- fully) before us the love of the world and all sin, greed, love of silver. And we toil with great labour after glory and greatness, and after false and transitory things we toil. Although we win them, death tears {them) from us and we becojne pitiable, because we lose this life and that {i.e., the next)."

The Arabic text is a perfectly literal translation of the above, except of the phrases italicised. Instead of the other dog, it has that dog. For not it has nothing. For the shadow it has appari- tion or phantasm. It omits the words which he had, but in the same sentence adds after bore away the words '•'• and flowed on."

The moral begins thus : " By this is shown to us, the Just king. . ." Then after clean bread it adds which the king gave to the dog. For his holy body it has the clean body which Christ gave us. For before our eyes before (us) it has before us to begin with. Then all si?i, such as greed, etc. For tra7isitory it has failing and transitory. For Although, etc., the following : "As long as we do not augment them. Then comes death and carries us off from the midst, and we are left pitiable and prostrate, because we have lost this world and the future out of our greed here."

Several of these variants are intelligible only as misunder- standings of the Armenian. For example, the phrase found not is good Armenian in the sense of could not, viz., take the other dog's bread. The Arabic translator has not understood this idiomatic use of the word egit, and only knows its primary meaning, which is '■'■found." Accordingly he turns 7iot into nothing to complete his sense.

The Arabic in the moral renders clean bread and then cleati body. The body however is holy and not clean ; but the bread thrown to the dog was of course clean and not holy. The reason why the Arabic uses the same adjective is quite clear when we glance at the Armenian, for it has in both places the same word sourb, but sourb means indifferently clean or holy according to the context. Thus, the Arabic is intelligible from the Armenian, but not the Armenian from the Arabic.

The same criticism holds good of the Arabic phrase " carries us off from the midst " ; where the Armenian has " tears (them) from us." The Armenian leaves the thing torn away unexpressed.