Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/105

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Concerning everything favourable to Coition
89

like a ram. If the woman has her neck deformed in similar manner, their coition will resemble the mutual attack of two horned beasts with their heads. The most convenient position for them will be that the woman should stoop down, and he attack her from behind. The man whose hump appears on his back in the shape of only the half of a jar is not so much disfigured as the one of whom the poet has said—

"Lying on his back he is a dish;
Turn him over, and you have a dish-cover."

In his case the coition can take place as with any other man who is small in stature and straight; he can, however, not well lie on his back.

If a little woman is lying on her back, with such a humpbacked man upon her belly, he will look like the cover over a vase. If, on the contrary, the woman is large-sized, he will have the appearance of a carpenter's plane in action. I have made the following verses on this subject:

"The humpback is vaulted like an arch;
In seeing him you cry, 'Glory be to God!'
You ask him how he manages the coitus?
'It is the retribution for my sins,' he says,
The woman under him is like a board of deal;
The humpback, who explores her, does the planing."

I have also said in verse:—

"The humpback's dorsal cord is tied in knots,
The angels tire with writing all his sins:[1]
In trying for a wife of proper shape;
And for her favours, she repulses him.
And says, 'Who bears the wrongs we shall commit?'
And he, 'I bear them well upon my hump!'
And then she mocks him saying, 'Oh, you plane!
Destined for making shavings, take a deal board;'"

  1. Note in the autograph edition. The angels, according to the creed of the Mussulmans, are incessantly busy in writing down, whilst standing behind or before a man, his good and bad actions. (See the "Koran," chap, vi., verse 61, and chap, xiii., verse 12.