134 
C. J. Lyall —Translations from the Hamdseh. [No. 2, 
v. 1. “ Light thing,” ’ amaman; that is, something near at hand, 
easily to be grasped and recovered. 
v. 2. The translation fails to give the full force of the original here, 
which may thus be rendered :—“ What time I trailed my robes of silk and 
wool to the nearest of my wine-sellers, and shook loose my locks.” The 
difference between reyt (plural of reytah ) and murut (plural of mirt ) is 
not certain: both were sumptuous garments, worn over the under-clothing, 
and long in the skirt. “ The nearest of my wine-sellers” shews that he 
was a wealthy man, and had many to supply him with wine. The use of 
tijdr (plural of tdjir ), which properly means traders in general, in the 
exclusive sense of wine-sellers, is worthy of notice, though frequent in the 
poetry of the pagan time. 
v. 3. “ Ripe and wise” : so I render lialcam, which properly means one 
who on account of his years and his wisdom is chosen as a judge or arbiter 
in disputes between tribe and tribe, or man and man. Such a halcam was 
the ancient ‘Amir son of eS-Barib, ancestor on the mother’s side of the 
tribes of Thaqif and ‘Amir son of Sa‘sa‘ah, who on account of the drowsi¬ 
ness caused by great age required to be roused to attention by a thrust 
from a stick (or, as some say, by one of his sons knocking one stick against 
another to awake him). See Ham., p. 98, and el-Meydani, at the proverb 
inna-l-asa quri l at licti-l-hilmi (i, 32, Biilaq edn.). 
v. 4. Here also I have diverged from the phrase, but not the sense, 
of the original, which, literally rendered, is—“ If the length of his long 
life has delighted him, yet there has become apparent in his face the long 
time that he has been saved (from death).” In changing the third to the 
second person, I have merely put the general result intended in another 
way exactly equivalent. 
XIII. 
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