[FN#81]Arab. Maydán (from Persian); Lane generally translates it "horse course ' and Payne "tilting yard." It is both and something more; an open space, in or near the city, used for reviewing troops, races, playing the Jeríd (cane-spear) and other sports and exercises: thus Al-Maydan=Gr. hippodrome. The game here alluded to is our -'polo," or hockey on horseback, a favourite with the Persian Kings, as all old illustrations of the Shahnamah show. Maydan is also a natural plain for which copious Arabic has many terms, Fayhah or Sath (a plain generally), Khabt (a low-lying plain), Bat'há (a low sandy flat), Mahattah (a plain fit for halting) and so forth. (Pilgrimage iii., 11.) [FN#82] For details concerning the "Ghusl" see Night xliv. [FN#83] A popular idiom and highly expressive, contrasting the upright bearing of the self-satisfied man with the slouch of the miserable and the skirt-trailing of the woman in grief. I do not see the necessity of such Latinisms as "dilated" or "expanded." [FN#84] All these highest signs of favour foreshow, in Eastern tales and in Eastern life, an approaching downfall of the heaviest; they are so great that they arouse general jealousy. Many of us have seen this at native courts. [FN#85] This phrase is contained in the word "ihdák" =encompassing, as the conjunctiva does the pupil. [FN#86] I have noted this formula, which is used even in conversation when about to relate some great unfact. [FN#87] We are obliged to English the word by "valley," which is about as correct as the "brook Kedron," applied to the grisliest of ravines. The Wady (in old Coptic wah, oah, whence "Oasis") is the bed of a watercourse which flows only after rains. I have rendered it by "Fiumara" (Pilgrimage i., 5, and ii., 196, etc.), an Italian or rather a Sicilian word which exactly describes the "wady." [FN#88] I have described this scene which Mr. T. Wolf illustrated by an excellent lithograph in "Falconry, etc." (London, Van Voorst, MDCCCLII.) [FN#89] Arab. "Kaylúlah," mid-day sleep; called siesta from the sixth canonical hour. [FN#90] This parrot-story is world-wide in folk-lore and the belief in metempsychosis, which prevails more or less over all the East, there lends it probability. The "Book of Sindibad" (see Night dlxxix. and "The Academy," Sept. 20, 1884, No. 646) converts it into the "Story of the Confectioner, his Wife and the Parrot," and it is the base of the Hindostani text-book, "Tota-Kaháni" (Parrot-chat), an abridgement of the Tutinámah (Parrot-book) of Nakhshabi (circ. A.D. 1300), a congener of the Sanskrit "Suka Saptati," or Seventy Parrot-stories. The tale is not in the Bul. or Mac. Edits. but occurs in the Bresl. (i., pp. 90, 91) much mutilated; and better in the Calc. Edit I cannot here refrain from noticing how vilely the twelve vols. of the Breslau Edit have been edited; even a table of contents being absent from the first four volumes.