or has become weak, and he can, in consequence, no longer fulfil his conjugal duties, they say of him: "the member of such a one is dead"; which means: the remembrance of him will be lost, and his generation is cut off by the root. When he died they will say, "His member has been cut off," meaning, "His memory is departed from the world."[1]
The dekeur plays also an important part in dreams. The man who dreams that his member has been cut off is certain to live long after that dream, for, as said above, it presages his loss of memory and the extinction of his race.
I shall treat this subject more particularly in the explication of dreams.[2]
The teeth (senane) represent years (senine); if therefore a man sees in a dream a fine set of teeth, this is for him a sign of a long life.
If he sees his nail (defeur) reversed or upside down, this is an indication that the victory (defeur) which he has gained over his enemies will change sides; and from a victor; he will become the vanquished; inversely, if he sees the nail of his enemy turned the wrong way, he can conclude that the victory which had been with his enemy will soon return to him.
The sight of a lily (sonsana) is the prognostication of a misfortune lasting a year (son, misfortune; sena, year).
The appearance of ostriches (namate) in dreams is of bad augury, because their name being formed of naa and mate, signifies "news of death," namely, peril.
- ↑ Note of the autograph edition.—There is here a play of words respecting the different meanings of dekeur, and which it is impossible to give in English.
- ↑ The explication of these dreams turns generally upon words with several meanings, or upon references to the radical letters of which they are composed.
