4 She-who-must-be-obeyed: the Amahagger name for Ayesha. “She-who-must-be-obeyed” has an interesting history with Henry Rider Haggard. As a small child, it’s been reported, Haggard’s nursemaid would often terrorize him by leaving him in the charge of a grotesque rag doll who went by this name (see Biographical Note).
5 the East African Somali: Somalis are lighter-skinned Africans. Haggard is subscribing to the consensus of his day, which decreed that the lighter-skinned the race, the more likely civilized. This use of skin color thus allowed the Europeans to create a hierarchy of more and less civilized races in Africa.
6 Mammon of Unrighteousness: In the New Testament, Mammon is the personification of avarice of all kinds.
7 Amahagger, the People of the Rocks: The derivation of the name of the Amahagger and its supposed meaning, “the People of the Rocks,” is not certain and is likely a wholly original coinage by Haggard, despite his editorial note to the contrary in Chapter XVI (see this page).
8 a rocky defile: A defile is a narrow pass, especially through mountains.
9 crisped like a negro’s: that is to say, naturally curled.
10 who was called Ustane: Ustane’s name is also, very likely, Haggard’s coinage. Norman Etherington, in his excellent The Annotated She (Indiana University Press, 1991), suggests that the proper pronunciation of the name is “Oo-sta-nay,” not “Oo-stayn.”
VII. USTANE SINGS
1 coram populo: Latin for “in public.”
2 I wished Job’s scruples had been at Jericho: The slang meaning of “Jericho” is a place of concealment, exile, or—as Holly is using the term—great and desirable distance.
3 Norfolk red-poll stock: a breed of reddish, hornless cattle from England.
4 the great balls of fire that move about there: Holly is referring to ignis fatuus (literally, “foolish fire”), or will-o’-the-wisps, eerie lights seen over marshland at night. These may result from the ignition of methane escaping from dead plants or animals, or from some sort of phosphorescence. They are generally held to presage death, or at least the bedevilment of travelers foolish enough to follow them.
VIII. THE FEAST, AND AFTER!
1 to avoid whom Job had played the rôle of another Scriptural character: specifically Joseph, who, in Genesis 39, is imprisoned for alleged sexual misconduct.
2 Kafir corn: sorghum.
3 the viscera of the dead, after the fashion of the Egyptians: The ancient Egyptians would remove all bodily organs and separate them before the process of embalming a mummy began.
4 the case of Etruscan amphoræ: The Etruscans, as other ancient cultures did, placed in large earthenware jars commodities that would be of use to the dead, and left them in their burial chambers.
5 an eland or a koodoo: These are both breeds of large African antelope.
6 an entertainment of the Barmecide stamp: In The Arabian Nights, the Barmecides were a family in Baghdad who, at one point, entertain a beggar by feeding him imaginary food.
7 anthropophagous customs: cannibalism.
8 “playing ’possum”: playing dead. When opposums are attacked, they’re said to feign death (or, alternately, to slip into comas).
9 beneath my gripe: “Gripe” is simply a variant of “grip.”
10 Peace Society: The New York Peace Society, possibly the first pacifist organization, was founded in 1815. In 1828 it joined with other such groups to form the American Peace Society. Presumably, the group had expanded into England by Haggard’s time.
IX. A LITTLE FOOT
1 these hyænamen: Billali applies this epithet to the cannibals because hyenas are scavengers.
2 an unctuous and sooty mark: “Unctuous” means oily, or fatty.
X. SPECULATIONS
1 quoting the saying of a politician: Despite the fact that Haggard probably did have some specific politician’s remark in mind, this quotation has not proven traceable.
2 teal, coot, snipe, and plover: Teal are freshwater ducks with brightly colored feathers. Coot are aquatic birds that, strictly speaking, are not inhabitants of Africa. Snipe are small shore birds with long bills, like sandpipers. Plover are a family of wading birds with large, round bodies.
3 Bacchus with ivy leaves: Bacchus, the Roman god of wine (a variant on the Greek Dionysus), is usually depicted wearing a crown of leaves.
XI. THE PLAIN OF KÔR
1 wandering globes of fen fire: another reference to ignis fatuus.
2 clouds of jewelled honeysuckers: Honeysuckers, also called honeyeaters, are small birds native, actually, to Australia and the South Pacific.
3 quagga: Quagga, now extinct, were wild horses closely related to zebras, and indigenous to southern Africa. Attempts are being made, as of this writing, to revive the species by breeding them out of zebras.
4 single-barrel sporting Martini: A Martini rifle was a breech-loading hunting rifle.
5 sculptures in bas-relief: low-relief carvings in which the sculpted figures do not protrude much from their background. Bas-relief carvings are technically rather difficult and connote a great deal of craftsmanship on the part of the sculptors.
6 not unlike a Zanzibar mat: possibly referring to a prayer mat; the population of Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim.
XII. “SHE”
1 Norfolk jacket: a belted jacket with box pleats in the front and back.
2 instruments resembling a lyre: Lyres are small harps, extant in ancient Greece, with U-shaped frames and crossbars to which the strings are attached. Lyres were employed almost exclusively to accompany recitations or singing.
3 generally used for signets: A signet is a seal, often mounted upon a ring.
4 “kootooing”: Kowtowing (as it’s more commonly rendered; Haggard’s spelling here seems to be unique), a Chinese practice, involves paying respect to a superior by kneeling and knocking one’s head against the floor.
5 Mary, Queen of Scots, going to execution in a play: Mary Stuart (1542–87), the daughter of James V of Scotland, was next in line to the British throne after the children of Henry VIII. Her life was rife with intrigue, adventures, plots, etc., and ended when her cousin Elizabeth I had her beheaded. She had the last, albeit posthumous, laugh when her son James succeeded the childless Elizabeth to the English throne. Her life has been repeatedly dramatized, most famously by Swinburne (in a trilogy), Friedrich Schiller, and (after Haggard’s death) Maxwell Anderson.
6 instinct with beauty: that is, imbued with it.
7 an ancient tongue, that sweet child of the old Syriac: Ayesha is referring to Arabic, which she mistakenly says is descended from Syriac, a now dead Aramaic language of the Near East that survives in several religious contexts. Although both Syriac and Arabic are Semitic languages and have, ultimately, the same roots, Syriac is scarcely the ancestor of Arabic—the two developed side by side for centuries.
XIII. AYESHA UNVEILS
1 Yárab, the son of Kâhtan: Arabic names are traditionally given in the form of the bearer’s own name plus the name of his father. Women identified themselves through their father’s and grandfather’s names.
2 Yaman the Happy: Yemen.
3 the Persian Ochus, or are the Achæmenians gone: Ochus (also known as Artaxerxes III) was the king of Persia and, upon mercilessly defeating the Egyptians, became the first pharaoh of the Thirty-first Dynasty; he ruled Egypt from 343 to 338 B.C., when he was murdered by one of his ministers, the eunuch Bagoas. Ayesha refers to Ochus and his descendants as the Achaemenians because the Persians she knew were of the Achaemenian dynasty.
4 since then the Ptolemies: The Ptolemy dynasty was founded by the Macedonian Ptolemy I (c. 367–283 B.C.), a general under Alexander the Great who was given Egypt and Libya on Alexander’s death and the partition of his empire. There were fifteen kings of Egypt named Ptolemy; the name Cleopatra was favored by the family’s queens and princesses: The Cleopatra of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony was Cleopatra VII.
5 does the Temple stand that the Wise King built: Ayesha r
efers to the Temple of Solomon, built as a resting place for the Jews’ Ark of the Covenant and completed in 957 B.C.
6 “Herod!” she said. “I know not Herod.”: Of course she doesn’t. Ayesha would not know Herod, known as Herod the Great (37 B.C.–A.D. 4), because she had gone into seclusion hundreds of years before his birth. She is speaking of Solomon’s Temple, destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, while Holly is referring to the Temple built during Herod’s reign to replace the edifice constructed in the sixth century B.C., after the Jews’ exile in Babylonia, and seriously damaged by the Romans Pompey and Crassus. Herod’s Temple, completed decades after his death, was promptly destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.
7 Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant: “They make a desert, they call it peace.” This phrase (in fuller version: “To robbery, slaughter, and plunder they give the false name of empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace”) was recorded by the Roman historian Tacitus in the Agricola and attributed to Calgacus, a Caledonian chieftain conquered by the Romans.
8 Their Messiah came: The entire following paragraph is a (false) portrayal of the Jews as the crucifiers of Christ and as being too avaricious to accept any god that does not bring them “wealth and power.” Though Haggard was an early Zionist and wrote sympathetically of the Jews in some of his novels, he was not immune from the general anti-Semitism of his time, and in his old age his Zionism faded and his distaste for Jews grew more pronounced.
9 a vessel of Him they call Jehovah, ay, and a vessel of Baal, and a vessel of Astoreth: Ayesha is comparing the Jewish God to the two principal gods of the Phoenicians: Baal, the principal male deity of power and fertility, and Astoreth, his female counterpart. One of the reasons this is such a galling comparison is that Baal, in the Jewish tradition, is taken as the ultimate false idol.
10 Why, if I remember, so said one of their prophets: perhaps a reference to Zechariah 13:7: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.”
11 that Grecian Helen: Helen, the daughter of Leda and Zeus, was the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, and the most beautiful woman in the world. Her abduction by Paris, a prince of Troy, brought on the Trojan War.
12 a span in thickness: A span is a unit of length equal to the distance between the tip of the thumb and the tip of the little finger in an outstretched hand—about nine inches.
13 I ween: I think.
14 Actæon who perished miserably: In Greek mythology, Actaeon was a hunter who, because he saw the goddess Artemis naked, was turned into a stag and killed by his own hunting dogs.
15 her white kirtle: “Kirtle” is an archaic term for a woman’s shift or tunic.
16 argent of her breast: “Argent” is silver, or silvery white.
17 Venus Victrix: literally, Venus the conqueror. Venus might be depicted in Roman art and on Roman coins not only as the goddess of love but as the goddess of victory.
XIV. A SOUL IN HELL
1 diablerie: fiendishness, witchcraft.
2 the original Circe: In the Odyssey, Circe is the temptress witch who turns Odysseus’ men into pigs.
3 vive la guerre!: French for “Long live war!”
XV. AYESHA GIVES JUDGMENT
1 Mark Tapley himself: Mark Tapley is a character in Charles Dickens’s 1844 novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, who is constantly cheerful and good-humored.
2 one jot or tittle: slang for “a tiny, little bit.” The word “jot” derives from “iota”; a tittle is a tiny diacritical mark. Perhaps Ayesha’s usage is Haggard’s conscious echo of Jesus’ “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18).
XVI. THE TOMBS OF KÔR
1 There is no new thing under the sun, as the wise Hebrew wrote: See Ecclesiastes 1:9.
2 the space beneath the dome of St. Paul’s in London: This is a large area of more than 8,000 square feet (given that the diameter of St. Paul’s inner dome is 101 feet). More interesting than the area is Haggard’s means of conveying it, alluding to a landmark that any of his readers could easily visualize.
XVII. THE BALANCE TURNS
1 Becca in Arabia: “Becca” is a variant name for the holy city of Mecca.
2 more deadly than any Basilisk’s: The basilisk is a mythological dragon with deadly breath and, most infamously, deadly eyes.
3 Tyrian cloth: cloth dyed with the most expensive dye of the ancient world, Tyrian purple, which was produced in Tyre, a Phoenician city on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.
4 old Greek epithalamium: An epithalamium is a lyric poem written in honor of a wedding.
5 we Arabs had many gods: The names that follow are all names of idols worshiped throughout Arabia by the pre-Islamic Arabs.
XVIII. “GO, WOMAN!”
1 no marriage or giving in marriage: “For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven” (Mark 12:25).
2 casuistry of this nature: Casuistry is specious or sophistic reasoning intended to mislead or confuse.
XIX. “GIVE ME A BLACK GOAT!”
1 Nero illuminated his gardens with living Christians: According to Tacitus, Nero held a party in which the illumination was Christians tied to burning crosses.
2 Cæsar’s dust—or is it Alexander’s?—may stop a bunghole: It’s Alexander’s, actually, at least according to Shakespeare: “Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bunghole?” (Hamlet, V.1).
3 a neighbouring kraal: In Afrikaans, a kraal is a corral.
4 blesbok, then an impala, then a koodoo: Blesboks, impalas, and koodoos (kudus) are African antelopes.
XX. TRIUMPH
1 Venus from the wave, or Galatea from her marble: Both are images of perfect female forms being unveiled for the first time. The first is the image of Venus’s birth, as she stepped forth fully formed from the sea and onto the shore of Crete. The second is that of Galatea, the statue carved out of marble that was so beautiful that its sculptor, Pygmalion, fell in love with it, and the statue was transformed into a real woman.
XXI. THE DEAD AND LIVING MEET
1 inspired Sibyl: In ancient Greece and Rome, sibyls were female prophets.
2 confirmed opium-eaters: In the nineteenth century, eating opium was the most common method of self-administration. Opium, in various forms, was legal and widely available.
XXII. JOB HAS A PRESENTIMENT
1 Old Nick himself: the Devil.
2 The Witch of Endor: the mystical woman whom the despairing King Saul sought for a prophecy before he fought the Philistines (I Samuel 28). She raised from the dead the spirit of the prophet Samuel.
3 what is going to happen to sorceresses: Job is talking about the admonition in Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
4 more like a Methody elder: A “Methody elder” would be a Methodist lay preacher. It’s perhaps worth noting, given this attack on the honesty of Methodists, or at least of their lay preachers, that Haggard himself was a Methodist.
5 winding-sheet: the sheet in which corpses are wrapped, a shroud.
6 dull edge of eld: senility; “eld” meaning age.
7 heavier shekels: Shekels are ancient units of measurement and currency; here the meaning is coins, or money in general.
8 But we have a queen already: The queen is, of course, the beloved Victoria (1819–1901).
XXIII. THE TEMPLE OF TRUTH
1 the Suez Canal, or even the Mont Cenis Tunnel: These were both great feats of Victorian-era civil engineering. The Suez Canal, which was completed in 1869, connected the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea. The Mont Cenis Tunnel, completed in 1871, runs eight and a half miles under the Alps, connecting Modane, France, to Bardonecchia, Italy.
2 the Thames Embankmen
t: a pathway built along the north shore of the Thames River in London in the mid-nineteenth century; its construction significantly diminished the width of the river. Again we see Haggard’s deft use of an allusion his readers could readily grasp.
3 El-Karnac, at Thebes: Karnak, in Egypt, is one of the world’s largest temple complexes. Built over a period of hundreds of years, it features immense walls and massive columns.
4 their hoar majesty: “hoar,” or “hoary,” means white with age.
5 this ruined fane: A fane is a temple.
XXIV. WALKING THE PLANK
1 Devonshire lane in stone: Throughout Devonshire, a mostly rural county in the southwest of England, are very narrow, winding roads that have hedges or stone walls on either side.
2 Stygian gloom: relating to the River Styx and, by association, Hades, the underworld, the realm of the dead.
3 like a half-crown: A half-crown is a coin, now out of circulation in Britain, worth two shillings sixpence.
4 like a rope-dancer: like a tightrope walker.
5 “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof”: from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:34.
XXV. THE SPIRIT OF LIFE
1 wax matches: Wax matches, more like little candles than matches, are essentially combustible match heads set atop rolled wax paper; they’re fairly long, do not blow out easily, and burn for a relatively long time before going out.