Note 253
The Tale of the Envier and the Envied.
I use this Irish term = crying for the dead, as English wants the word for the præfica, or myrialogist. The practice is not encouraged in Al-Islam; and Caliph Abu Bakr said, ; "Verily a corpse is sprinkled with boiling water by reason of the lamentations of the living, i.e. punished for not having taken measures to prevent their profitless lamentations. But the practice is from Negroland whence it reached Egypt, and the people have there developed a curious system in the "weeping-song" I have noted this in "The Lake Regions of Central Africa." In Zoroastrianism (Dabistan, chapt. xcvii.) tears shed for the dead form a river in hell, black and frigid.
…till he revived and told them what had befallen his daughter from the Ifrit; whereat their grief was right grievous and the women and the slave girls shrieked and keened,[FN#253] and they continued their lamentations for the space of seven days. Moreover the King bade build over his daughter's ashes a vast vaulted tomb, and burn therein wax tapers and sepulchral lamps: but as for the Ifrit's ashes they scattered them on the wi…
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