[FN#60] Arab. "Shá'ir Al-Walahán" = the love-distraught poet; Lane has "a distracted poet." My learned friend Professor Aloys Sprenger has consulted, upon the subject of Al-Walahán the well-known Professor of Arabic at Halle, Dr. Thorbeck, who remarks that the word (here as further on) must be an adjective, mad, love-distraught, not a "lakab" or poetical cognomen. He generally finds it written Al-Shá'ir al-Walahán (the love-demented poet) not Al-Walahán al-Shá'ir = Walahán the Poet. Note this burst of song after the sweet youth falls in love: it explains the cause of verse-quotation in The Nights, poetry being the natural language of love and battle. [FN#61] "Them" as usual for "her." [FN#62] Here Lane proposes a transposition, for "Wa-huwá (and he) fi'l-hubbi," to read "Fi 'l-hubbi wa huwa (wa-hwa);" but the latter is given in the Mac. Edit. [FN#63] For the pun in "Sabr"=aloe or patience. See vol. i. 138. In Herr Landberg (i. 93) we find a misunderstanding of the couplet— "Aw'ákibu s-sabri (Kála ba'azuhum) Mahmúdah: Kultu, 'khshi an takhirriní.'" "The effects of patience" (or aloes) quoth one "are praiseworthy!" Quoth I, "Much I fear lest it make me stool." Mahmúdah is not only un laxatif, but a slang name for a confection of aloes. [FN#64] Arab. "Akúna fidá-ka." Fidá = ransom, self-sacrifice and Fidá'an = instead of. The phrase, which everywhere occurs in The Nights, means, "I would give my life to save thine " [FN#65] Thus accounting for his sickness, improbably enough but in flattering way. Like a good friend (feminine) she does not hesitate a moment in prescribing a fib. [FN#66] i.e. the 25,000 Amazons who in the Bresl. Edit. (ii. 308) are all made to be the King's Banát" = daughters or protégées. The Amazons of Dahome (see my "Mission") who may now number 5,000 are all officially wives of the King and are called by the lieges "our mothers." [FN#67] The tale-teller has made up his mind about the damsel; although in this part of the story she is the chief and eldest sister and subsequently she appears as the youngest daughter of the supreme Jinn King. The mystification is artfully explained by the extraordinary likeness of the two sisters. (See Night dcccxi.) [FN#68] This is a reminiscence of the old-fashioned "marriage by capture," of which many traces survive, even among the civilised who wholly ignore their origin. [FN#69] Meaning her companions and suite. [FN#70] Arab. "'Abáah" vulg. "'Abáyah." See vol. ii. 133. [FN#71] Feet in the East lack that development of sebaceous glands which afflicts Europeans. [FN#72] i.e. cutting the animals' throats after Moslem law.