Note 195 — THE LINGUIST-DAME, THE DUENNA AND THE KING’S SON.

This series of puzzling questions and clever replies is still as favourite a mental exercise in the East as it was in middle-aged Europe. The riddle or conundrum began, as far as we know, with the Sphinx, through whose mouth the Greeks spoke: nothing less likely than that the grave and mysterious Scribes of Egypt should ascribe aught so puerile to the awful emblem of royal majesty—Abu Haul, the Father of Affright. Josephus relates how Solomon propounded enigmas to Hiram of Tyre which none but Abdimus, son of the captive Abdæmon, could answer. The Tale of Tawaddud offers fair specimens of such exercises, which were not disdained by the most learned of Arabian writers. See Al-Hariri’s Ass. xxiv. which proposes twelve enigmas involving abstruse and technical points of Arabic, such as: (¿) “What be the word, which as ye will is a particle beloved, or the name of that which compriseth the slender-waisted milch camel?” Na’am = “Yes” or “cattle,” the latter word containing the Harf, or slender camel. Chenery, p. 246.