3.8.2
The First Dream. The aforementioned hag-ridden person beheld himself traveling to India, where he met upon the road a mare, getting on in years and with no saddle upon her. When the mare saw him, she approached him and stopped, whinnying. He went some steps beyond her and lo, she ran after him. Catching up with him, she stopped again, causing him to say to himself, “There is some mystery behind this mare. I shall take hold of her forelock that I may see what her matter may be.” As soon as he laid his hand upon her, she lowered her head, as if to say, “Mount, and fear not the lack of a saddle!” so he mounted her, for he was fatigued with walking, and proceeded for a short distance. Suddenly, he found himself at a saddler’s shop, so he got down from the mare and bought her a saddle. Then he remounted and proceeded down a thickly forested ravine and a branch trapped his head and prevented him from going further. He tried to move forward but could not and he did not want, for pity, to force the mare forward with his spurs, so he stopped and thought about all that had befallen him, wondering greatly. At that moment, he happened to scratch his head, and lo, it had sprouted six horns, two in front (one on each temple), two in back, and two in the middle, and the branch in question was caught in them all. He managed to cut the branch off the tree, but it remained caught in the horns. He then proceeded in this state and all who saw him wondered at him and said, “Look at the six horns on the head of that man!” but he paid them no attention.
3.8.3
Eventually, he entered a dark and narrow place overlooked by rocks and boulders and four of the horns smashed against one of the rocks and broke and fell off, leaving him with only the two in front. One of these, however, now leaned toward the other, touching it, so that they rubbed and knocked against each other, and every time they knocked against one another they made a mighty sound, and people came from afar to behold him and gaze at him. Finding himself helpless before them and seeing that the crowd was preventing him from proceeding, he resolved to turn back, but the mare refused to let him do so and started bucking and bounding forward, and the more he kicked her with his leg to make her turn, the more she bucked and moved ahead. Wondering, he looked at her and lo, her color was no longer what it once had been, so he said to himself, “Maybe this is not the animal that I first mounted,” and he got down to take a look at her teeth. When he tried to put his hand in her mouth, she reared up and knocked him over, giving him such a powerful wallop that he fainted. When the mare beheld him cast down and prostrate on the ground, she seemed to take pity on him and commenced to breathe into his nostrils and lick the place where the horns had broken off until he revived somewhat and started moaning and bellowing out prayers to God to rescue him from his plight. The mare indicated to him with her head that he should mount so that they might return by the road by which they had come and, gathering all his strength, he arose and mounted. When he reached the same thickly forested place, those same broken horns grew back and became as they had been, and he kept touching them with his hand as he proceeded.
3.8.4
When evening came, he alighted at an inn so as to spend the night there and ordered the innkeeper to take care of his mount and to bring both her and him dinner. When he awoke the next morning, he found that the saddle had been stolen and said to the innkeeper, “You lost my mare’s saddle while it was in your keeping and I cannot easily ride her without it.” “On the contrary,” said the other, “your claim is false, for when you came, you were riding it bareback,” and a quarrel broke out between them and they seized the front of each other’s robes. When the man realized that he would receive no benefit from this, he decided to make the best of a bad job and go back and he went to the mare and mounted her and kept moving until the evening, when he found another inn on his road so he stayed the night there. When morning came, and he wanted to mount, he could not find the bridle, and things took their course with him and this innkeeper as they had with the other. Then he spent a third night in another place and in the morning he found that his mare had lost its tail, and so it continued: every night he spent in an inn, he lost another of the mare’s limbs, so that he reached his city on foot, the mare having disappeared entirely. As for the horns, four vanished with the mare and the two in front remained.
T
HE
I
NTERPRETATION
3.8.5
When this horny dream was thrown at the Fāriyāq, he set about playing with his mustache, as was his custom, rubbing his forehead, and pinching the place between his eyes, until he was guided to an understanding of its meaning, at which he wrote in the margin the following:
3.8.6
This is the interpretation offered by the humble slave named the Fāriyāq to the honorable and most excellent gentleman Flummox son of Lummox of the dream that he saw in his sleep. The mare stands for a woman. The walking and the fatigue stand for bachelorhood. The saddle stands for the woman’s good manners and the bridle for her honor. The thickly forested place stands for the feasts, banquets, and visits that the married man is obliged against his will to become involved in and into which he has to stick his head and that of his wife. The branch stands for certain of the invitees who get their claws into the wife. The horns stand for the married state existing between the man and the woman and their sprouting and their disappearance stand for the changing of that state and its return to how it was before. His staying at the inns stands for his traveling with his wife and the vanishing of the mare stands for his losing her. The rest of the dream is self-explanatory105—though God knows best.
3.8.7
After the master of the Chamber had taken the interpretation and examined it for a while, he returned to the Fāriyāq in haste, signs of anger on his face, and said, “Your interpretation is wrong on many points. Firstly, you express yourself briefly, in contrast to the custom of oneiromancers. Secondly, the mare cannot stand for a woman because among us the woman cannot be less than, which is to say under, the man; on the contrary, she is higher than he. Your interpretation has to be made in our terms, not those of your people. Thirdly, the bridle cannot stand for a woman’s honor because the bridle is placed in the mouth and a woman’s honor lies elsewhere. Now, though, you must set that aside and start on the interpretation of the second dream. Exert yourself, then, in writing and expatiation; haply you may hit the mark and gain heavenly compensation.”
CHAPTER 9: THE SECOND DREAM
3.9.1
The master of the Oneiromancer’s Chamber — may God prolong his days, exalt his standing among the hag-ridden and give it a raise—beheld in a dream one day that he had conceived the desire to write a sermon and read it out to the congregation on a feast day, so he took pen and paper and wrote a single letter and lo, he heard his wife calling to him from her room to help her put on her stockings, so he left his writing and hastened to her. After he had helped her to put on her stockings and returned, he saw that a second letter had been added to the first in an ink that was not his. “Who, I wonder,” he said to himself, “entered my room and penned this letter, which fits what I wanted to say?” Then he took up the pen and wrote another letter and lo, he heard his wife calling to him to fasten the strap of her sandal, so he went to her and did what she asked of him and returned and found another letter had been added to the first three, thus completing the word. At this, his wonder grew. Then he took up his pen and wrote a whole word and lo, he heard his wife calling him once more to comb her kuʿkubbah,106 which seems to mean (though only God knows for sure) the front part of her hair, so he went to her and combed it gently and smoothly and then went back and found that a whole word had been added to his word, complementing it. Then he took up his pen and wrote two words and lo, he heard his wife calling him to put up the hair at the back of her neck, so he left his notebook and went, and when he returned he found two whole words. Once a line had completed itself, his wife called to him to tie on her bustle. When he returned, he found another whole line. He continued until, when he had finished a page, his wife called to him once more, and when he came back he found a second whole page, and when he had filled a quire, he found another quire, and so it continued until the whole notebook was full.