1877.] C. J. Lyall —Three Translations from the Hamdseh. 
171 
Notes. 
This poem is in the Kamil (dimeter hypercatalcctic) and is scanned thus : 
W W WW WW \af W 
v. 1. “ burd ” a striped woollen stuff of el-Yemen, counted of great price. 
v. 2. “a noble stock”: mcdddin, plural of ma^dm, literally “mines”: hence, the 
origin of a family or race. 
v. 3. “ a hauberk flowing” : sdbighah , dir ‘ being understood : a coat of mail that 
reaches to the ankles. 
v. 4. “a grooved blade” : shutub. Shutub or shutab are the grooves on a sword 
made for the blood to flow off after a stroke. “ Bodies of men” abddn : this may mean 
also “ short coats of mail” ; but here it seems best to take it in the more usual sense. 
The sword of ‘Amr son of Ma‘di-kerib, called es-Samsum or es-Samsdmeh (‘‘the short 
and stout, compact and heavy”), which he inherited from the Himyerite Kings, was ono 
of the most famous blades of Arab legend. 
After this verse comes another in some editions 
I Ml (St j 
And a straight spear-shaft that quivers when 
I poise it, aiming it straight and true. 
v. 8. “ Furrowing the hard earth as they ran” yefhasna bil-ma l zu > i sheddci. The 
verb fahasa is explained as meaning “ making holes in the earth like afuhis” plural 
of ufhus which is the nest of the Qata. But this sense seems inappropriate, as the swifter 
the flight the less impression would the runner’s feet make on the ground ; another read¬ 
ing is yemhusna, from mahasa , which means to run swiftly : also to glance, gleam, of light¬ 
ning. 
v. 11. “Their chief”: Jcebsh , literally, “ram.” This word is frequently used to 
denote the leader of a troop, as the ram leads the flock : e. g. in the Mo‘all. of El-Harith 
son of Hillizeh, v. 50. 
Bound Qeys, his men clad in mail with a chief 
of el-Yemen, as though he were a hard white rock. 
(.Qjara&iy means ‘ of el-Yemen’, because that is the land of the QaralS or leaves of 
the selem [.Mimosa flava, Forsk.] wherewith hides are tanned.) 
v. 14. “ Profit nought at all” : Id ycruddu zendd; zend means a fire-stick, and the 
literal meaning of this proverbial expression is “ will not bring as return so much as 
a fire-stick.” 
v. 16. This ‘Amr was counted, in the battles of el-Islam, as equal to a thousand 
men. “The Khalifeh ‘Omar” (we read in the Aghani, XIV. p. 28) “sent to Sa‘d 
son of Abu Waqqas, his general in el-‘Iraq, ‘Amr son of Ma‘di-kerib and Tuleyhah 
son of Khuweylid el-Asadi, and wrote to him ‘ Lo ! I have sent to aid thee two thou¬ 
sand men.’ ” 
v. 17. “Lonely abide as sword in sheath” : baqitu mithla-s-seyfi ferdu. The lone¬ 
liness is explained in two ways : first, because the sword has no companion in its sheath ; 
and second, taking es-Seyf “ the sword,” as meaning the incomparable blade cs-Samsdm 
which had no fellow or like. 
