Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 2.djvu/65

 The Tale of Ghanim bin Ayyub. 45 TALE OF GHANIM BIN AYYUB THE DISTRAUGHT^ THE THRALL O* LOVE. IT hath reached me, O auspicious King, that in times of yore and in years and ages long gone before, there lived in Damascus a merchant among the merchants, a wealthy man who had a son like the moon on the night of his fulness 2 and withal sweet of speech* who was named Ghanim bin 'Ayyiib surnamed the Distraught, the Thrall o' Love. He had also a daughter, own sister to Ghanim, who was called Fitnah, a damsel unique in beauty and loveliness. Their father died and left them abundant wealth, And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. fofcen it fo'as tfje ^fjirtn-nintft She said, it hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the merchant left his two children abundant wealth and amongst other things an hundred loads 8 of silks and brocades, musk-pods and mother o' pearl ; and there was written on every bale, " This is of the packages intended for Baghdad," it having been his purpose to make the journey thither, when Almighty Allah took him to Himself, which was in the time of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Our " Job." The English translators of the Bible, who borrowed Luther's system of transliteration (of A.D. 1522), transferred into English the German "j" which has the sound of "i" or "y" ; intending us to pronounce Yacob (or Yakob), Yericho, Yimnites, Yob (or Hiob) and Yudah. Tyndall who copied Luther (A.D. 1525-26), pre- served the true sound by writing lacob, Ben lamin and ludas. But his successors unfortunately returned to the German ; the initial I having from the xiii. century beea ornamentally lengthened and bent leftwards became a consonant ; the public adopted the vernacular sound of ' j " (dg) and hence our language and our literature are disgraced by such barbarisms as "Jehovah " and "Jesus" Dgehovah and Dgeesus for Yehovah and Yesus. Future generations of school-teachers may remedy the evil ; meanwhile we tie doomed for the rest of our days to hear Gee-rusalem ! Gee-rusalem ! etc Nor is there one word to be said in favour of the corruption except that, like the Protestant mispronunciation of Latin and the Erasmian ill-articulation of Greek, it has become " English," and has lent its little aid in dividing the Britons from the rest of the civilised world. The moon, I repeat, is masculine in the so-called " Semitic " tongues.
 * ".*. camel-loads about Ibs-joo ; and for long journeys lbs.250,