THE NURSERY RHYMES OF THE ARABS.

Who is that singing in such a sweet plaintive voice in the room beneath our porch?  It is the Sit Leila, wife of Sheikh Abbas, saying a lullaby to her little baby boy, Sheikh Fereed.  We will sit on the porch in this bright moonlight, and listen while she sings: 

    Whoever loves you not,
    My little baby boy;
    May she be driven from her house,
    And never know a joy! 
    May the “Ghuz” eat up her husband,
    And the mouse her oil destroy!

This is not very sweet language for a gentle lady to use to a little infant boy, but the Druze and Moslem women use this kind of imprecation in many of their nursery songs.  Katrina says that many of the Greek and Maronite women sing them too.  This young woman Laia, who sits here, has repeated for me not less than a hundred and twenty of these nursery rhymes, songs for weddings, funeral wails, etc.  Some of the imprecations are dreadful.

They seem to think that the best way to show their love to their babies, is to hate those who do not love them.

Im Faris says she has heard this one in Hasbeiya, her birthplace: 

        O sleep to God, my child, my eyes,
        Your heart no ill shall know;
        Who loves you not as much as I,
        May God her house o’erthrow! 
    May the mosque and the minaret, dome and all,
    On her wicked head in anger fall! 
    May the Arabs rob her threshing floor,
    And not one kernel remain in her store.

The servant girl Nideh, who attends the Sit Leila, thinks that her turn has come, and she is singing,

    We’ve the white and the red in our baby’s cheeks,
    In pounds and tons to spare;
    But the black and the rust,
    And the mould and the must,
    For our neighbor’s children are!

I hope she does not refer to us for we are her nearest neighbors.  But in reality I do not suppose that they actually mean what they sing in these Ishmaelitic songs.  Perhaps they do when they are angry, but they probably sing them ordinarily without thinking of their meaning at all.

Sometimes snakes come down from the ceilings of these earth-roofed houses, and terrify the people.  At other times government horsemen come and drag them off to prison, as they did in Safita.  These things are referred to in this next song which Nideh is singing: 

    If she love you not, my boy,
    May the Lord her life destroy! 
    Seven mules tread her down,
    Drag her body through the town! 
    Snakes that from the ceiling hang,
    Sting her dead with poison fang! 
    Soldiers from Damascus city,
    Drag her off and shew no pity! 
    Nor release her for a day,
    Though a thousand pounds she pay!

That is about enough of imprecations, and it will be pleasanter to listen to Katrina, for she will sing us some of the sweetest of the Syrian Nursery Songs.