when you are near them, saddle this camel of mine and mount
her; then put on my cloak and rend it, and mounting on a hill, shout out
these verses: 'A messenger hath openly proclaimed the death of Jamil. He
hath now a dwelling in Egypt from which he will never return. There was
a time when, intoxicated with love, he trained his mantle proudly in the
fields and palm-groves of Wadi-'l Kura! Arise, Buthayna! and lament
aloud: weep for the best of all thy lovers!'" The man did what Jamil
ordered, and had scarcely finished the verses when Buthayna came forth,
beautiful as the moon when it appears from behind a cloud. She was
muffled in a cloak, and on coming up to him said: "Man, if what thou
sayest be true, thou hast killed me; if false, thou hast dishonoured
me!" [i.e. by associating her name with that of a strange man, still
alive.] He replied: "By Allah! I only tell the truth," and he showed her
Jamil's mantle, on seeing which she uttered a loud cry and smote her
face, and the women of the tribe gathered around, weeping with her and
lamenting her lover's death. Her strength at length failed her, and she
swooned away. After some time she revived, and said [in verse]: "Never
for an instant shall I feel consolation for the loss of Jamil! That time
shall never come. Since thou art dead, O Jamil, son of Mamar! the pains
of life and its pleasures are alike to me." And quoth the lover's
messenger: "I never saw man or woman weep more than I saw that
day."--Abridged from Ibn Khallikan's great Biographical Dictionary as
translated by Baron De Slane, vol. i, pp. 331-326.

APOCRYPHAL LIFE OF ESOP, THE FABULIST.

The origin of the Beast-Fable is still a vexed question among scholars,
some of whom ascribe it to the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the
transmigration of human souls into different animal forms; others,
again, are of the opinion that beasts and birds were first adopted as
characters of fictitious narratives, in order to safely convey reproof
or impart wholesome counsel to the minds of absolute princes, who would
signally resent "plain speaking."[127] Several nations of
antiquity--notably the Greeks, the Hindus, the Egyptians--have been
credited with the invention of the beast-fable, and there is no reason
to believe that it may not have been independently devised in different
countries. It is very certain, however, that Esop was not the inventor
of this kind of narrative in Greece, while those fables ascribed to him