Page:The Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare.djvu/140

 These are opened with a key turning a screw, and are not easily picked.

Pace 58. " And she commanded that the drums should be beaten." — Tobl, the drum, is an instrument, we believe, of Arab invention. From Arabia it passed to the Turks, and so into Europe. The Arab drum is of diminutive size.

Pace 60. " And she fetched a throne of gold inlaid with crusts of jewels." —This is clearly a townsman's interpolation, as no form of chair is used in Arabia, nor furniture of any costly kind.

Pace 61. " This is a holy man, one unacquainted with women."—Celibacy, though contrary to true Mohamedan teaching, is looked upon in North Africa as an additional virtue in the case of professedly holy men. So are nearly all forms of asceticism. Throughout the present poem the religious and magical element represents the ideas of the North African Arabs rather than of the Arabs of Arabia proper.

Pace 64. " And when their meal was ended, they brought wine and drank of it."—In Arabia and all Mohamedan countries it is not the custom to drink during meals, but when the meal is ended. The allusion to wine-drinking is a town idea, as wine is quite unknown to the Bedouins. Pace 65. " nd she clung to his stirrup." —Again a town idea, as the true Bedouins do not ride with stirrups.

Pace 69. " Yet leave the cords..—The meaning of this advice is obscure.

Pace 70. " And I named the name of God, and I leaped into the saddle."»—The Arabs on all journeys or adventures, or on mounting a horse for the first time, ejaculate, '' Bismillah er rahman er rahim," "In the name of God the Merciful the Compassionate."

Pace 74. "O shou of the race of Himyar.'—The Beni Helal claimed descent from Himyar, the progenitor of the Himyarite kings of Yemen.

Pace 76. " And about the hour of the Doha."'-—-The Doha is the ~ point of time half-way between sunrise and noon, or a little earlier; as the Asr is half-way between noon and sunset.

Pace 79. " And he called on those near him... to bring wood and