Kays (properly, Qays), the handsome son of Syd Omri, an Arab chief of Yemen, becomes enamoured of a beauteous maiden of another tribe:  a damsel bright as the moon,[117] graceful as the cypress;[118] with locks dark as night, and hence she was called Layla;[119] who captivated all hearts, but chiefly that of Kays.  His passion is reciprocated, but soon the fond lovers are separated.  The family of Layla remove to the distant mountains of Nejd, and Kays, distracted, with matted locks and bosom bare to the scorching sun, wanders forth into the desert in quest of her abode, causing the rocks to echo his voice, constantly calling upon her name.  His friends, having found him in woeful plight, bring him home, and henceforth he is called Majnun—­that is, one who is mad, or frantic, from love.  Syd Omri, his father, finding that Majnun is deaf to good counsel—­that nothing but the possession of Layla can restore him to his senses—­assembles his followers and departs for the abode of Layla’s family, and presenting himself before the maiden’s father, proposes in haughty terms the union of his son with Layla; but the offer is declined, on the ground that Syd Omri’s son is a maniac, and he will not give his daughter to a man bereft of his senses; but should he be restored to his right mind he will consent to their union.  Indignant at this answer, Syd Omri returns home, and after his friends had in vain tried the effect of love-philtres to make Layla’s father relent, as a last resource they propose that Majnun should wed another damsel, upon which the demented lover once more seeks the desert, where they again find him almost at the point of death, and bring him back to his tribe.

  [117] Nothing is more hackneyed in Asiatic poetry than the
        comparison of a pretty girl’s face to the moon, and not
        seldom to the disparagement of that luminary.  Solomon,
        in his love-songs, exclaims:  “Who is she that looketh
        forth in the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the
        sun?” The greatest of Persian poets, Firdausi, says of a
        damsel: 

          “Love ye the moon?  Behold her face,
          And there the lucid planet trace.”

        And Kalidasa, the Shakspeare of India (6th century
        B.C.), says: 

          “Her countenance is brighter than the moon.”

Amongst ourselves the epithet “moon-faced” is not usually regarded as complimentary, yet Spenser speaks of a beautiful damsel’s “moon-like forehead.”—­Be sure, the poets are right!

  [118] The lithe figure of a pretty girl is often likened by
        Eastern poets to the waving cypress, a tree which we
        associate with the grave-yard.—­“Who is walking there?”
        asks a Persian poet.  “Thou, or a tall cypress?”

  [119] “Nocturnal.”