This is the first mention of the windows in the Arabic MS.
For this “Roc” of the older writers see vols. v. 122; vi. 16–49. I may remind the reader that the O. Egyptian “Rokh,” or “Rukh,” by some written “Rekhit,” whose ideograph is a monstrous bird with one claw raised, also denotes pure wise Spirits, the Magi, &c. I know a man who derives from it our “rook” = beak and parson.
In the H. V. he takes the Lamp from his bosom, where he had ever kept it since his misadventure with the African Magician.
Here the mythical Rukh is mixed up with the mysterious bird Símurgh, for which see vol. x. 130.
The H. V. adds, “hoping thereby that thou and she and all the household should fall into perdition.”
Rank mesmerism, which has been practised in the East from ages immemorial. In Christendom Santa Guglielma worshipped at Brunate, “works many miracles, chiefly healing aches of head.” In the H. V. Alaeddin feigns that he is ill and fares to the Princess with his head tied up.
Mr. Morier in “The Mirza” (vol. i. 87) says, “Had the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, with all their singular fertility of invention and never-ending variety, appeared as a new book in the present day, translated literally and not adapted to European taste in the manner attempted in M. Galland’s translation, I doubt whether they would have been tolerated, certainly not read with the avidity they are, even in the dress with which he has clothed them, however imperfect that dress may be.” But in Morier’s day the literal translation was so despised that an Eastern book was robbed of half its charms, both of style and idea. My version is here followed by the popular English version from Galland, so that my readers may compare the old with the new.
This “pointing the moral,” as the reader will observe, belongs to Galland, who had no right to introduce the stale European practice into an Eastern tale.—R. F. B.
In the MS. of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Supplement Arabe (No. 2523, vol. ii. fol. 147), the story which follows “Aladdin” is that of the Ten Wazirs, for which see Supp. Nights ii. In Galland the _Histoire de Codadad et de ses Frères_ comes next to the tale of Zayn al-Asnam: I have changed the sequence in order that the two stories directly translated from the Arabic may be together.