The clothing of the Night is of black colour, leylâ ḥâlikat al-jilbâb, as is said in Arabic,[530] (compare μελάμπεπλος νύξ[531]), a ‘pitchy mantle,’ as Shakespeare says, The day begins to break, and night is fled Whose pitchy mantle overveil’d the earth. _King Henry VI._ First Part, II. 2.[532] And in Arabic poetry also we meet with night described as a ‘pitchy mantle.’ For the poet Abû-l-Shibl says in a remarkable elegy[533]: Shamsun kaʾanna-ẓ-ẓalâma albasahâ * thauban min-az-zifti au min-al-ḳîrî A sun, as if darkness had clothed him With a garment of resin or pitch. The darker the Night, the thicker is the black cloak with which it is provided. Even modern languages have expressions like _thick_ darkness (Hungarian _vastag setétség_); in Arabic a very dark night is called a night with a heavy covering, leyl murjahinn.[534] The name Lôṭ, accordingly, signifies, like the Hellenic female forms Kalyke, Kalypso (from καλύπτω), the _Covering Night_. It is very significant of the Night that the Greek figures are represented as weaving clothes for the Thunderer:[535] they weave the cloak with which they cover over the world when they spread darkness over it. Surely no one will after all this doubt that the name Lot is a designation of the Covering Night. Should this be still doubtful, perhaps the following fact from the domain of the Arabic language may bring conviction. Everyone knows the Arabic word kâfir, at least in its usual meaning of Infidel. Even the earlier Arabian philologians, who, notwithstanding frequent amusing whims and hobbies, often exhibit a fine feeling and very sober judgment as to etymology, said that this word received the meaning Infidel only through the dogmatism of Islâm, that it originally denoted the _Coverer_, and that the transition of meaning was founded on the idea that the Infidel covers up God’s omnipotence. Similarly in Hebrew the verb kâphar is said of God when he _forgives_ (i.e. covers) the sins of men; in Arabic ġafar.[536] In Arabic the Unthankful is also a kâfir, a ‘Coverer,’ since he _covers_ the blessings he has received: and in late Hebrew he is similarly termed kephûy ṭôbhâ ‘one who covers up the good.’[537] In short, the kâfir is properly the Coverer. Now the darkness of night is called kâfir by old Arabian poets. We have already (in the Tenth Section of this chapter, p. 134), quoted for another purpose the verse of the poet of the tribe Mâzin: ‘The Shining one stretches his right hand towards him who _covers up_,’ where the latter is kâfir, the Night. The celebrated poet Lebîd, too, says in his prize-poem (Muʿallaḳâ, v. 65): ‘Until the stars stretch out their hands towards the kâfir, and the weaknesses of the boundaries are covered over by their darkness,’ Ḥatta iḏâ alḳat yadan fî kâfirin * waʾajanna ʿaurâti-th-thuġûri ẓalâmuhâ.