United States or Christmas Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
How? had that wretch claim over thee ere I came? But she looked fearfully at the corners of the room and exclaimed, 'Hush, my betrothed! speak not of him in that fashion, 'tis dangerous; and my power cannot keep off his emissaries at all times. Then she said, 'O my betrothed, know me a sorceress ensorcelled; not that I seem, but that I shall be! Wait thou for the time and it will reward thee.
The "recompense" the man expects is the golden treasure which the ensorcelled snake is supposed to guard. This idea is as old as the Dragon in the Garden of the Hesperides and older. Fox. In French we have lopez, luppe, leu, e.g. Venant a la queue, leu, leu, i.e. going in Indian file. Hence the names D'Urfe and Saint-Loup. It was worshipped and mummified in parts of Ancient Egypt e.g.
And now I saw realizing with a clutch of indescribable awe, with a sense of inexplicable profanation the secret of this ensorcelled chamber.
What a rare tale is that of the Ensorcelled Prince, alias The Young King of the Black Isles, who though he sat in a palace where fountains limbecked water "clear as pearls and diaphanous gems," and wore "silken stuff purfled with Egyptian gold," was from his midriff downwards not man but marble! Who is not shocked at the behaviour of the Three Ladies of Baghdad!
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the young ensorcelled Prince said to the King, "When I smote the slave with intent to strike off his head, I thought that I had slain him; for he groaned a loud hissing groan, but I had cut only the skin and flesh of the gullet and the two arteries!
Once more I went forward to sacrifice her, but she again lowed aloud upon which in ruth I refrained and commanded the herdsman to slay her and flay her. He killed her and skinned her but found in her neither fat nor flesh, only hide and bone; and I repented when penitence availed me naught. I gave her to the herdsman and said to him, "Fetch me a fat calf;" so he brought my son ensorcelled.
Her father asked, "Where is the man?"; and she answered, "This dog is a man whom his wife hath ensorcelled and I am able to release him." When her father heard her words, he said, "Allah upon thee, O my daughter, release him." So she took a gugglet of water and, after uttering words over it, sprinkled upon me a few drops, saying, "Come forth from that form into thy former form."
So fared it with her; but as regards King Badr Basim, after Princess Jauharah had ensorcelled him and had sent him with her handmaid to the Thirsty Island, saying, "Leave him there to die of thirst," and Marsinah had set him down in a green islet, he abode days and nights in the semblance of a bird eating of its fruits and drinking of its waters and knowing not whither to go nor how to fly; till, one day, there came a certain fowler to the island to catch somewhat wherewithal to get his living.
These are the ruins whose report was carried to Bagdhad by those early caravan traders, and there woven into the flowery tapestries of the "Arabian Nights" nightmare cities, rising like an enchantment out of the desert sand; bereft of the voices and footsteps of men, but teeming with hoarded treasure and graven images of gods that gaze down, inscrutable and sternly resplendent, upon the wanderer who, stumbling fearfully through a labyrinth of silent halls, suddenly encounters, in demon-guarded chamber, some ensorcelled maiden, frozen to stone.
The hollow was a cave of some Aladdin of the Titans ablaze with enchanted hoards. It was a place of gems ensorcelled, gems in which imprisoned hosts of the Jinns of Light beat sparkling against their crystal walls to escape. I thrust the fantasies from me.
Word Of The Day