Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 4: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's HandbookBrewer, Ebenezer Cobham
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Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 4: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook
Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham
Allusions; Fiction -- Dictionaries; Literature -- Dictionaries
⁂ An extraordinary parallel to this tale is told in the third voyage
of Sindbad, the sailor. Sindbad’s vessel was driven by a tempest to an
island of pygmies, and advancing into the interior, the crew came to a
“high palace,” into which they entered. At sundown came home the
giant, “tall as a palm tree; and in the middle of his forehead was one
eye, red and fiery as a burning coal.” Soon as he saw the intruders,
he caught up the fattest of them and roasted him for his supper, then
lay down to sleep, and “snored louder than thunder.” At daybreak he
left the palace, but at night returned, and made his meal off another
of the crew. This was repeated a third night, but while the monster
slept, Sindbad, with a red-hot spit, scooped out his eye. “The pain he
suffered made him groan hideously,” and he fumbled about the palace to
catch some of his tormentors “on whom to glut his rage;” but not
succeeding in this, he left the palace, “bellowing with pain.” Sindbad
and the rest lost no time in making for the sea; but scarcely had they
pushed off their rafts when the giant approached with many others, and
hurled huge stones at the fugitives. Some of them even ventured into
the sea up to their waists, and every raft was sunk except the one on
which Sindbad and two of his companions made their escape.--_Arabian
Nights_ (“Sindbad, the Sailor,” third voyage).
Another similar tale occurs in the Basque legends, in which the
giant’s name is Tartaro, and his eye was bored out with spits made red
hot. As in the previous instances, some seamen had inadvertently
wandered into the giant’s dwelling, and Tartaro had banqueted on three
of them, when his eye was scooped out by the leader. This man, like
Ulysses, made his escape by means of a ram, but, instead of clinging
to the ram’s belly, he fastened round his neck the ram’s bell, and
threw over his back a sheep-skin. When Tartaro laid his hand on the
skin, the man left it behind and made good his escape.
That all these tales are borrowed from one source none can doubt. The
_Iliad_ of Homer had been translated into Syriac by Theophilus
Edessenes, a Christian Maronite monk of Mount Libănus, during the
caliphate of Hárun-ur-Ráshid (A.D. 786-809).--See _Notes and Queries_,
April 19, 1879.
=Ulysses of Brandenburg= (_The_), Albert III., elector of Brandenburg,
also called “The German Achillês” (1414-1486).
=Ulysses of the Highlands= (_The_), Sir Evan Cameron, lord of Lochiel
[_Lok.keel´_], and surnamed “The Black” (died 1719).
⁂ It was the son of Sir Evan who was called “The Gentle Lochiel.”
=Umbra= (_Obsequious_), in Garth’s Dispensary, is meant for Dr. Gould
(1699).
=Umbriel´= (2 _syl._), the tutelar angel of Thomas, the apostle, once
a Sadducee, and always hard of conviction.--Klopstock, _The Messiah_,
iii. (1748).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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