91 C. J. Lyall— The Mo'allaqah of Lelnd, with the [No. 3, 
lage in el-Yemen twenty miles from San‘a (Marasid), which also means spears (i. e. 
long and sharp horns), spears being made there as well as at el-Khatt. 
v. 52. Kesab and Sukham, names of two of the hounds. 
v. 56. “ A certain soul ba‘da-n-nufus, i. e. himself. This verse affords an inter-, 
esting example of the archaic use of j| as the equivalent of ^/| ( )) o| ) i. e. unless. 
Having the force of “if not,” it causes the verb to take the jussive or apocopated form 
required in the protasis of a conditional sentence. 
v. 58. “As we told tales together” : the Arabic verb samara means to pass the 
night in drinking wine and holding pleasant discourse together. “ Vintner’s flag:” 
the shops ( hdnut ) of the wine-sellers were distinguished by flags hung out before them ; 
when the flag was taken down it was a sign that the shop was closed or that the wine 
had run out. In this verse and the next Lehid vaunts his liberality in buying wine for his 
fellows when it was at its dearest. So ‘Antarah (Mo‘all. 52), describing a gallant 
man, calls him hattakn ghayati-t-tij&r “ one who pulls down, or causes to be taken down, 
the vintners’ flags,” i. e. exhausts their stock. 
vv. 60, 61. The morning draught of wine is praised above all others by the 
ancient poets. In the work entitled el-Marj-en-nadir (“the green meadow”) Mohammed 
ibn Abi Bekr el-Usyuti says of the sabuh or morning potation—“ The poets make men¬ 
tion of the morning draught in preference to wine drunk at other times, because in 
ancient times Kings and others used to prefer drinking in the morning, and because of 
the freedom of the heart at that time from care or thought of the obstacles and calami¬ 
ties of Fortune ; also because those that arose early to drink anticipated those who 
blamed their wantonness : for it is the custom of the blamer to blame a reveller in the 
morning for what he has done the night before, because that is the time when he be¬ 
comes sober and recovers from his drunken fit.” (Quoted from Kosegarten, Mo‘all. of 
‘ Am r Ivulth. p. 49.) 
“ A singing girl.” The singing girls who sang at the drinking parties of the an¬ 
cient Arabs were Greeks, Syrians, or Persians ; until after el-Islam the Arabs, though 
masters of rhythm and metre, had no indigenous system of singing except the rude 
song (originally of the camel-driver) called rajez. These girls probably sang for the most 
part in their own tongue and played the music which they had learned in Persian ‘Iraq 
or Syria ; but in the life of en-Nabighah of Bubyan as given in the Aghani (IX. 164) 
a singing-girl of Yethrib (afterwards el-Medineh) is mentioned, who sang one of that 
poet’s poems in Arabic and so enabled him to detect a fault of prosody. 
v. 62. “ Whose chill I have shut out,” i. e. by gifts of clothes and food to the 
naked and hungry. The phrase “ when its reins were in the hand of the bitter North” 
means that the North, the coldest of winds, had full control over the day. 
v. 63. “ My girdle its bridle” : he threw the bridle over his shoulders so that 
it became a girdle to him, in order that he might have his hands free for his weapons. 
v. 64. The dust blew from the hill-top where he acted as scout on to the Ene¬ 
my’s banners : this indicates that they were close at hand and that his post was one of 
danger. 
v. 65. “ The terrors of our line of fear l aurat-eth-thughur . ‘Aurdt means the 
dangerous or undefended portions of a place open to attack ; and thughur , plural of 
thaghr, is the frontier over which the enemy spreads his line of assailants. When the 
sun sets, and watching at the place of observation is of no further use by reason of the 
darkness, Lebid comes down and scours the plain between his Tribe and the foe, to see 
that no night attack is being prepared by the latter. 
