Note 134 — HASAN OF BASSORAH.[5] (continued 3)
Richard Francis Burton translation · Edition 2
A fair specimen of the Arab logogriph derived from the Abjad Alphabet which contains only the Hebrew and Syriac letters not the six Arabic. Thus 4 × 5 = 20 which represents the Kaf (K) and 6 × 10 = 60, or Sin (S). The whole word is thus “Kus,” the Greek κυσὸς or κυσσὸς, and the lowest word, in Persian as in Arabic, for the female pudenda, extensively used in vulgar abuse. In my youth we had at the University something of the kind,
To five and five and fifty-five
The first of letters add
To make a thing to please a King
And drive a wise man mad.
Answer VVLVA. Very interesting to the anthropological student is this excursus of Hasan, who after all manner of hardships and horrors and risking his life to recover his wife and children, breaks out into song on the subject of her privities. And it can hardly be tale-teller’s gag as both verse and prose show considerable art in composition.