Lane omits because it is “extremely puerile” this most characteristic tale, one of the two oldest in The Nights which Al-Mas’udi mentions as belonging to the Hazár Afsáneh (See Terminal Essay). Von Hammer (Preface in Trébutien’s translation p. xxv.) refers the fables to an Indian (Egyptian?) origin and remarks, “sous le rapport de leur antiquité et de la morale qu’ils renferment, elles méritent la plus grande attention, mais d’un autre côté elles ne sont rien moins qu’ amusantes.”
Lane (iii. 579) writes the word “Shemmas”: the Bresl. Edit. (viii. 4) “Shímás.”
Arab. “Khafz al-jináh” drooping the wing as a brooding bird. In the Koran (lvii. 88) “lowering the wing” = demeaning oneself gently.
The Bresl. Edit. (viii. 3) writes “Kil’ád”: Trébutien (iii. 1) “le roi Djilia.”
As the sequel shows the better title would be, “The Cat and the Mouse” as in the headings of the Mac. Edit. and “What befel the Cat with the Mouse,” as a punishment for tyranny. But all three Edits. read as in the text and I have not cared to change it. In our European adaptations the mouse becomes a rat.
So that I may not come to grief by thus daring to foretell evil things.
Arab. “Af’à,” pl. Afá’í = ὄφις, both being derived from O. Egypt. Hfi, a worm, snake. Af’à is applied to many species of the larger ophidia, all supposed to be venomous, and synonymous with “Sall” (a malignant viper) in Al-Mutalammis. See Preston’s Al-Hariri, p. 101.
This apparently needless cruelty of all the feline race is a strong weapon in the hand of the Eastern “Dahrí” who holds that the world is God and is governed by its own laws, in opposition to the religionists believing in a Personal Deity whom, moreover, they style the Merciful, the Compassionate, etc. Some Christians have opined that cruelty came into the world with “original Sin;” but how do they account for the hideous waste of life and the fearful destructiveness of the fishes which certainly never learned anything from man? The mystery of the cruelty of things can be explained only by a Law without a Law-giver.
The three things not to be praised before death in Southern Europe are a horse, a priest and a woman; and it has become a popular saying that only fools prophesy before the event.