She proffered me a tender coynte: Quoth I, 'I will not roger thee!'
She drew back, saying, 'From the Faith he turns, who's turned by Heaven's decree![1]
'And front-wise futtering, in one day, is obsolete persistency!'
Then swung she round and shining rump like silvern lump she showed me!
I cried: 'Well done, O mistress mine! No more am I in pain for thee;
'O thou of all that Allah oped[2] showest me fairest victory!'
"And yet another:—
Men craving pardon will uphold their hands; women pray pardon with their legs on high:[3]
Out on it for a pious, prayerful work! The Lord shall raise it in the dephts to lie."[4]
- ↑ Note by Sir Richard: Koran 51, 9, alluding, in the text, to the preposterous venry her lover demands.
- ↑ Note by Sir Richard: Arab "Futuh," meaning openings, and also victories, benefits. The lover congratulates her on her mortifying self in order to please him.
- ↑ Vide note to Excursus to this story, p. 100.
popular saying about the man whom the woman rides (vulg. St. George; in France, le postillion}: "Cursed be he who maketh woman Heaven and himself earth!" Some hold the Koranic passage to have been revealed in confutation of the Jews, who pretended that if a man lay with his wife backwards, he would beget a cleverer child. Others again understood it of preposterous venery; which is absurd: every ancient law-giver framed his code to increase the true wealth of the people—population—and severely punished all processes, like onanism, which impeded it. The Persians utilise the hatered of women for such misuse when they would force a wife to demand a divorce and thus forfeit her claim to dowry; they convert them into catamites till, after a month or so, they lose all patience and leave the house. We do not propose to add to Sir Richard's note, reserving our remarks on the subject for their proper place in a subsequent volume.
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