awin Arabs. He will come up and stay with
us, and tell us of his adventures. He says that the Sit Harba, the wife
of the great Arab Sheikh ed Dukhy, taught him a number of the Bedawin
Nursery Songs, and although he is weary with his journey, he will repeat
some of them in Arabic.

They are all about camels and spears and fighting and similar subjects,
and no wonder, as they see nothing else, and think of nothing else.

To-morrow is the feast day,
We've no "henna" on our hands;
Our camels went to bring it,
From far off distant lands;
We'll rise by night and listen,
The camel bells will ring;
And say a thousand welcomes
To those who "henna" bring.

And here is a song which shows that the Bedawin have the same habit of
cursing their enemies, which we noticed in the Druze lullabys:

On the rose and sweetest myrtle,
May you sleep, my eyes, my boy;
But may sharpest thorns and briars,
All your enemies destroy!

Ali says that one of the most mournful songs he heard in the desert was
the following:

I am like a wounded camel,
I grind my teeth in pain;
My load is great and heavy,
I am tottering again.
My back is torn and bleeding,
My wound is past relief,
And what is harder still to bear,
None other knows my grief!

The next is a song which the people sung in the villages on the borders
of the desert. By "the sea" they mean the Sea of Galilee:

My companions three,
Were fishing by the sea;
The Arabs captured one,
The Koords took his brother,
In one land was I,
My friends were in another.

I was left to moan,
In sorrow deep and sad,
Like a camel all alone,
Departing to Baghdad;
My soul I beg you tell me whether,
Once parted friends e'er met together?

The Bedawin have as low an idea of girls as the Bedawin in the cities,
and are very glad when a boy is born. Sometimes when the Abeih girls are
playing together, you will hear a little girl call out, "it is very
small indeed. Why it is a little wee thing, as small as was the
rejoicing the day I was born!" But hear what the Bedawin women sing when
a boy is born:

Mashallah, a boy, a _boy_!
May Allah's eye defend him!
May she who sees and says not _the Name_,
Be smitten with blindness and die in shame!

How would you like to live among the Bedawin, and have a dusky Arab
woman, clad in coarse garments, covered with