"Among the hill-folk of Algeria; journeys among the Shawia of the Aures mountains", New York, Dodd, Mead, 1921
By M. W. Hilton-Simpson
CHAPTER II
A START INTO THE HILLS — BENI FEBAH, A BERBER VILLAGE OF THE AURES
—PRIMITIVE POTTERY—AN ANCIENT SYSTEM OF IRRIGATION—A "WATER-CLOCK"—A RAIN-INDUCING CEREMONY —THE "SORCERESS OF THE MOON"—A WEDDING AT BENI FEBAH.
Having become acquainted with the Arab inhabitants of a desert oasis, we turned our attention to their Berber neighbours of the hills. The first Shawia village in which we stayed long enough to undertake any investigation of the habits of the people was Beni Ferah, some twelve miles as the crow flies to the south-east of El Kantara. A day or two before our departure from the little hotel a native mounted orderly from the administrative headquarters of the district joined us in order to assist us in procuring the baggage animals necessary for the journey and to accompany us in our wanderings only in the area over which his administrator held sway, for, upon leaving this administrative district, we were to be accompanied by another orderly from the headquarters of the area we should then enter.
The French authorities have always been good enough to lend me the services of such an orderly during my various expeditions in the Aures in response to a request from a learned society in England to further the interests of my works and these services have proved invaluable.
The presence of the orderly, who invariably knows every inch of this area, and is personally acquainted with most of its inhabitants, does away with the necessity of employing a "guide” who is not infrequently nothing but a plausible hanger-on from a tourist centre and quite ignorant of the country beyond the beat of the ordinary tourist, indeed it has always been our rule to employ no servants whatever, other than the drivers who accompany our pack mules for the days upon which we are actually moving from village to village, for the blue burnous with its red trimmings of the native orderly, his official uniform, is a certain passport to the hospitality of the Kaids, as the chiefs are called, or the headmen in the case of small villages, who will always place a room at our disposal and provide us with food cooked by their wives, so that all the "housework" necessary consists in merely unrolling our sleeping valises and cooking upon a spirit and any small additions we may require to the fare offered us by our hosts, services which we prefer performing ourselves to delegating them to a number of hired and often undesirable loafers from a town. Indeed it has been my experience that the more the traveller can do for himself the more he is respected by the natives, and that the people of both the desert and the hills regard with a certain contempt one who requires a host of servants to look after him, although obviously a number of followers are required should it be necessary to camp out away from a village. The assistance of a uniformed representative of the Government has an excellent effect upon the prices asked for mule transport, and for anything the traveller may require to buy, and, in additionto his other uses, he provides a most valuable interpreter, for all these "dei'ras" who have accompanied me speak the Berber language of the Shawia as well as Arabic, indeed those I have employed in the remoter parts of the Aures have been Shawia themselves.
It may be objected that the presence of a Government servant might arouse the suspicions of the people, and cause them to be especially reticent with regard to many of their customs. I have not found this to be the case. The orderlies are natives first and officials afterwards; they are well acquainted with what goes on in the villages, but are by no means anxious to interfere with the liberties of their own people by objecting to various practices which, while outside the letter of the law, they would, and probably do, indulge in themselves. The first dei'ra we employed has accompanied us upon several subsequent expeditions. Belkadi ben Hamou has grown old in the service of the French. Of a kindly, if somewhat fussy, disposition, he took over both moral and physical charge of us from the moment he first joined us at El Kantara, and to this day I am convinced that he regards us as a couple of headstrong children, who would be certain to get into mischief or hurt ourselves should he allow us for a moment to stray beyond the reach of his ever-watchful glance.
A visit to the Kaid of El Kantara resulted in his promise to secure for us the two riding mules we should require, as well as the two animals necessary to carry our kit, so that early in the morning upon the day appointed for our departure the animals duly arrived at the hotel, and our rolls of bedding, a couple of suit cases and two wine boxes of provisions were placed in nets of halfa-rope, laid across the pads on the mules' backs to receive them, or stuffed into home-made goats' hair sacks, called in Arabic " tellis," in which grain, etc., is carried in Algeria.
Our baggage having been loaded up we mounted, Belkadi riding his own young horse, and followed our pack-mules southward through the gorge. Upon passing through the gorge of El Kantara we left the Biskra road and turned eastwards across the wide stony valley towards the range of low rocky hills, which, as we have seen, lies to the south of the oasis, up whose steep slopes we slowly wended our way till, on arrival at its crest, we enjoyed a magnificent panorama of wild snow-capped mountains to the north and, a short distance farther on, of the foothills which fringe the great desert to the south-west, distant barren ranges of whose wonderfully delicate shades of blue, purple, pink, and grey nothing save the brush of a great artist can convey the slightest impression.
Crossing a high-lying level country, studded with dwarf juniper trees, the glorious panorama of the Sahara and its foothills always visible on our right, we reached Beni Ferah after a march of about four hours, moving always at the walking pace of our baggage mules.
This journey can be very cold, especially upon the slopes of the rocky hills. Indeed, on one occasion in February we encountered there a north-easterly gale, bringing with it sharp scuds of sleet, which was far moresuggestive of northern Europe in winter than of the fringe of the so-called burning Sahara, but on the occasion of our first visit the weather was normal, that is to say, sunny and warm, without any approach to unpleasant heat.
Soon after coming into sight of the village, standing upon a rocky knoll, with its gardens spread along the course of a stream below it, we passed a few dwellings, forming an outlying hamlet, and the ruins of a tower which had served as an outwork of defence in the troublous times before the French occupation of the country, and descending sharply to the bed of the stream, which barely damped the fetlocks of our mules, we ascended a lane, suggestive of a flight of broad steps, round the steep side of the knoll, and so entered the lower portion of the village, through the narrow streets of which we wended our way until, having passed round the knoll upon which it stands, we emerged into the level lower ground beyond, and halted at a cafe, beside which a venerable olive tree has afforded shelter from the sun in spring and summer to the members of the "djemmaa," or village council, for many generations gone. At the cafe we were received by the Kaid, a somewhat unprepossessing looking individual, whose looks, indeed, did not belie him for, a year or two later, finding himself in some doubt as to the final issue of the great war, he had safeguarded such public funds as were committed to his charge by departing with them for some unknown destination, whence he has not yet returned, and another now reigns in his stead.
Whatever his real character may have been, however, he received us cordially enough, and, after partaking of the usual refreshment at the cafe, he conducted us to a room in his own house a couple of hundred yards from the village, which he reserved for such visitors as came his way—an occasional official touring in the district, or the not very welcome gatherer of taxes.
This room boasted a few articles of European furniture, mostly in a state of disrepair, such as a bedstead, a table, and a chair or two, so that in a very few minutes we had settled down in our new surroundings and were partaking of a fairly well cooked meal prepared by the family of our host.
It was apparent the moment that we commenced to explore Beni Ferah, or Ain Zatout as the natives call the place, that it was no Arab settlement we were examining. Its cluster of small houses huddled together upon the steep eastern slope of the rocky knoll, from the summit of which a little mosque looks down some couple of hundred feet sheer to the brook below it to the west, were very different from the dwellings at El Kantara,for, although some of the newer buildings scattered about the lower ground boasted upper stories of mud brick, thus displaying a certain Arab influence in their construction, the older huts on the hill-top were entirely built of rough stone in the style which we soon learned to associate with a Shawia village, while the merest glance at the people around us showed us clearly that we were now in the land of Berbers. A very large proportion of fair (sometimes golden) hair, blue eyes, and complexions, especially in the case of young children, who lack the tan produced by years of exposure to the fierce heat of the summer sun, often paler than our own, were the physical characteristics which at once arrested our attention, while their strange Berber tongue, akin to that spoken by the Kabyles in the north, bore no resemblance to the Arabic of the nomads and of the oases of the Sahara.
Another outstanding difference between Beni Ferah and an Arab settlement immediately forced itself upon our notice. Everywhere, in the streets, on the roofs, sitting about outside their houses, coining and going without attempt at concealment, were numbers of women and girls.
Although the Berbers have embraced the faith of Islam, their women enjoy a freedom quite unknown to their Arab neighbours, and we soon found that we should not lack opportunities of talking to them and watchingthem at their various occupations, many of which, for example, pottery making, are carried on outside their homes in the full view of the passer-by. This pottery making is quaint if simple, and constitutes a survival of a very early art.
Nearly every Shawia woman is capable of manufacturing such earthenware utensils as she requires for her own home, but at Beni Ferah, where earth can be found which is peculiarly suitable to the potter, a large number of milk-bowls, stew-pots, large flat dishes, etc., are made by the women for sale to the nomads of the desert in Biskra market and in the neighbouring oases.
No tools whatever are used in their manufacture, the Berber woman simply fashioning the moistened clay with her hands, attaining really remarkable symmetry of form in the simple models she adopts, leaving the pots when made to dry in the sun. When nearly dry she polishes them with a snail-shell, or a smooth round pebble, to produce an even surface inside and out, and proceeds, in many cases, to decorate them with crisscross or lozenge patterns, each with its own name and significance, by means of a reddish earth moistened and applied upon a blade of halfa grass doubled back to serve as a brush ; and, finally, when the sun has hardenedthe pots, she combines with one or two friends, who have each made a number of articles, to bake her pots outside the village, where no danger exists of setting fire to neighbouring buildings. A pile of stones is made upon the ground, the pots being carefully laid upon the heap and covered with brushwood, old halfa grass sandals, the sweepings of the houses, etc., which is then ignited and the fire maintained for a couple of hours, after which the heated vessels are carefully removed with the aid of sticks, and a coat of shellac is applied to the inside of them, and sometimes to the outside as well to form a very rough ornamentation, while the pots are still too hot to be touched by hand.
The women displayed no embarrassment whatever when we approached to watch them plying the potter's trade, and we soon began to make friends among them and to learn something of their methods. The Shawiawoman has a very shrewd head for business (indeed, I would rather bargain with a number of Arab men than with one obstinate old Berber woman), as we discovered when collecting specimens of pottery at Beni Ferah. In 1913 we obtained as many pots and bowls as we wanted at prices varying from ten to twenty-five centimes each; in 1919, however, "owing to the war,” one franc was scornfully refused for exactly similar pots made by the same woman from the same earth, for the manufacture of which an infinitesimal quantity of shellac was the only material that she had purchased, and this despite the fact that, should I not buy the pot, there would be no one to follow me with a longer purse, or a more gullible disposition, with whom a better bargain could be driven.
War profiteering is an occupation to which the Berber women have taken very kindly indeed!
The gardens of Beni Ferah, which stretch away to a considerable distance along the course of the stream to the south-west of the knoll upon which the main part of the village stands, differ considerably from those of a desert oasis, for while apricots, walnuts, olives, figs, quinces, etc., grow in profusion, the comparatively few date palms are of an inferior quality owing to the greater altitude of the village above the sea and the corresponding decrease in the temperature.
The vegetable plots of Beni Ferah are much more neatly kept than those of El Kantara, for the Shawia are better gardeners than the Arabs, and are far more numerous owing to the greater annual rainfall they enjoy, but nevertheless in the spring and summer the gardens of Beni Ferah are entirely dependent for their water supply upon their stream, often reduced to very small proportions in the driest part of the year, the resources of which are husbanded with the greatest care.
The system of irrigation in use at Beni Ferah is that which obtains all over the Aures, and, as its study brought to our notice a very quaint method of measuring time, we may examine it in some detail. At a point situatedsome distance above the gardens the river is tapped by means of a barrage, often consisting merely of a line of boulders so placed as to deflect a certain amount of the stream into a narrow canal, known in Algeria as a "seggia," by means of which it is conducted through, or rather beside and slightly above, the land to be cultivated, each garden possessing its own branch channel from the main "seggia" by means of which it can beflooded in its turn. This simple system of canals must be of great antiquity, indeed at El Kantara and in certain parts of the Aures "seggias" cut in the solid rock dating from the time of the Roman occupation of Algeria are in constant use to-day, while disused channels at an altitude far higher than any now employed show that in ancient times the country enjoyed a greater rainfall and, in consequence, more abundant streams, so that a considerably larger area in its valleys was kept under cultivation than is possible now.
When a garden is purchased the buyer must acquire, also by purchase, the right to a supply of water according to its size; thus an extensive property may require the uninterrupted flow of all the water in the canal which irrigates it for one whole day in the week, while another may only be allowed one or more hours of irrigation in the same period.
The stream is tapped by more than one main "seggia," and the flow of water is turned into these in turn. Upon the day on which any given “seggia" is to be used the owners of the various gardens situated beside it assemble and; repairing to a point overlooking the gardens, proceed to divide the flow of water between them. So precious is the liquid that even a few moments more or less in the period of its flow into a garden is ofconsiderable importance, the Shawia therefore mistrust the employment of modern watches, whose rate can be dishonestly adjusted, as a means for measuring the time for which each owner is entitled to the flow of the canal. Instead, they make use of a system of measuring time which must be of very great antiquity, and has probably persisted in this land of survivals for countless generations in company with other strange customs of the Shawia.
A member of the village council accompanies the landowners, bringing with him a large earthen bowl, or metal pail, of water, and a small copper bowl, the bottom of which is perforated with a very minute hole; at themoment when the mud wall of the "seggia“ is cut through and the water allowed to flow into the first garden the councillor carefully places the perforated bowl, the property of the village council, and therefore the legalmeasure, upon the water in the pail, watching carefully for it to sink, which it will do in about fifteen minutes, and refloating it again immediately it does so. Thus each landowner is entitled to three, four, six, or eight, as the case may be, sinkings of the copper bowl rather than to any given number of actual hours or portions of an hour, and, as the time approaches when the flow of water into a garden is to cease, a neighbour in the little group of landowners will shout to an assistant in his garden below to be ready upon the instant to cut open an inlet into his land in the side of the "seggia" as soon as the bowl has sunk for the last time in the seriesallotted to his friend, who at that moment will cry out to a man in his garden to stern the flow of water he has been receiving by filling up with mud the hole through which it has been running.
Each landowner being present in person, and the fact that the measuring is done by an elder with the official bowl, appears to ensure that this quaint old-fashioned method of measuring time gives satisfaction to all concerned.
The lack of a sufficiency of water, which has called into use the water-clock just described, also tends to maintain in existence an old custom connected with prayer for rain which may well have existed in Algeria for countless ages before the arrival of the Mohammedan faith, and which, when once we had observed it, helped us considerably towards commencing our investigations into the superstitions of the Shawia.
One afternoon, during a prolonged period of drought, we heard the shrill piping voices of young children singing in the streets, and, eager to ascertain what this might mean, we hastened into the village to find a number of very young girls parading the streets carrying with them a very large wooden ladle, such as is used in every Shawia home, carefully dressed up with silk kerchiefs and silver brooches, earrings, and pendants to resemble a woman's head. At every door the little party paused, singing some such words as : " The ladle is playing in the street; Oh, clouds that are on high, allow the rain to fall," and asking alms of the inmates, who, in response, presented them with dried fruits, semolina, and other foodstuffs according to their means. After the whole village has been paraded the children take the food to a mosque or, in some villages, to a sacred tree and there cook and consume it, hoping that the ceremony they have gone through will cause the much desired blessing of a shower of rain to refresh their parent's sun-baked crops.
A knowledge of this ancient superstitious rite, combined with the acquaintanceship of numerous women, made while watching them at their potting and other crafts, enabled us to push forward to some extent in our inquiries into the practice of magic in the mountains, for the women are better equipped with magical lore than are the men of the Shawia—do we not speak of "old wives' fables" in this country even now ?—andwhen once the traveller possesses a knowledge of even a very few magical observances he will find it far easier to increase that knowledge than it had been to commence to acquire it; for the confidence of the natives in such matters is notoriously hard to obtain in the beginning of investigations, owing to their dread of exposing themselves to the ridicule of a thoughtless listener. The Shawia, as well as his Arab neighbour of the lowcountry, is extraordinarily credulous in his faith in the old magical observances of his people, observances, such as that which we will now describe, which the merest child should realize are part and parcel of a system of obtaining money under false pretences which flourishes like a green bay tree in every community in which superstition is still rife.
In Algeria divorce is obtainable, with or without just cause, in the simplest manner possible; a word before the Kadi or representative of Mohammedan law, a small payment to the wife if she be innocent of any groundsfor a divorce, and the wretched woman returns to her parents, or joins the numerous ranks of professional women whose existence is a blot upon the Shawia character. The women, therefore, are very ready to avail themselves of any means, magical or otherwise, which may enable them to retain the affections of their husbands when once they show signs of waning; a class of person, therefore, has been called into being toprovide these means—for a fee. An old woman of this class who possesses the requisite knowledge of magic, or whose eloquence can persuade her dupes that she possesses it, known as a " Sorceress of the Moon," proceeds at dead of night to a cemetery and there digs up the bones of an old corpse, which she burns upon a fire with some incense and magical herbs, at the same time invoking the aid of the Almighty in her impious task, for the desecration of a grave is regarded with the utmost horror by all right-minded Mohammedans. She then stains one of her eyelids only with antimony, one lip with walnut bark, and one hand and one foot with henna. This done the seeker after the philtre, upon whose nerves the eerie environment of a cemetery by night has by this time begun to tell considerably, will be horrified to notice that the moon has left the heavens and commenced to descend towards a dish of water placed ready to receive it, the sorceress meantime rolling in frenzy upon the ground and calling upon the moon to hasten in its descent, the ground around tremblingthe while in the convulsions of an earthquake. The moon eventually enters the water in the dish, " growling like a camel whose load is being placed upon its back," to use the words of one of my informants, and producing in the water a sort of foara which remains after, in response
to vigorous invocations on the part of the sorceress the moon has returned to its proper place in the firmament and the earthquake has ceased to disturb the calm of the night. This foam is carefully skimmed from the water by the sorceress, and subsequently dried, when she retails small quantities of it at very high prices to a wife who desires to mix it secretly with her husband's food in order to retain his affections.
This love philtre is merely one example of quite a series of similar observances, many of them of a highly disgusting nature, which are practised to this day in the Aures and the desert, although so reprehensible are they considered by the more reputable of the natives that a sorceress who indulges in them would almost certainly be killed should she be caught in the nefarious act. The poor women who allow themselves to be duped in this way, and who firmly believe that the moon does descend into the bowl, probably only do so because the environment of the cemetery and the mystic antics of the sorceress have combined to frighten them literally out of their wits, so that they are quite prepared to see the moon perform any weird evolution which the old hag may tell them it is performing without any regard to the possibility or otherwise of evolution itself.
During our first stay at Beni Ferah we were lodged in the house of the Kaid, but upon a later visit to this Berber village we stayed in the school which has been established for some years at Beni Ferah, and which is the residence of the only European in the place, the schoolmaster. This gentleman, whose solitary existence in the midst of Shawia culture must be trying in the extreme, welcomed us most kindly, and, indeed, I fancy he is genuinely delighted to receive a European traveller, whose presence gives him an opportunity of exchanging ideas with a member of civilized society which does not often come his way, save during his short periods ofleave at Constantine or some other large town. While staying as the guest of the schoolmaster we sought to excuse ourselves from the many invitations to meals which the Shawia, by no means less liberal in their hospitality than the Arabs of the plains, were continually pressing upon us, for these meals are somewhat trying functions, but our native friends would take no refusal.
If we could scarcely leave our European host to dine with them in their houses, then the meal should be sent down to us—but we would kindly remember to return the dishes in which it was sent! Thus we were entertained, royally enough according to Berber ideas, whether we wished it or not, and upon some occasions we were obliged to accept offers of hospitality in the village itself.
Invitations such as these are apt to test the endurance of the European to a considerable extent, for not only must the guest attack each and every dish placed before him, but he must do so with a heartiness quite foreign to the dinner tables of civilized society. As every traveller in the Aures, if he stays long enough to make acquaintances among the natives, may expect to partake of many meals with the Shawia, we may perhaps describe the dishes usually placed before a guest by a middle-class family in the hills.
The first course consists of a broth of mutton, goat, or chicken, so strongly flavoured with red pepper as to be practically uneatable by any one who is not accustomed to dishes of the very hottest kind; flat loaves of unleavened bread accompany the soup. This will often be followed by a stew of meat and dried apricots or plums (a dish which, when well prepared, is quite palatable), or, in the case of more modest repasts consisting of two courses only, by the national dish of Algeria, meat and "kuskus." The "kuskus," which is simply semolina steamed in a home-made pottery "double cooker" in vapours arising from the meat stewing in a bowl beneath it, is served up in a large bowl, fragments of meat garnishing its surface, which is placed on the ground before the guests, each of whom is provided with a wooden spoon, and sometimes, in deference to western ideas, with a plate as well.
While "kuskus" can be perfectly wholesome, and even palatable if cooked simply, it is very frequently rendered almost uneatable by the addition of quantities of butter that has been stored until rancid in a goatskin, in which condition it is beloved of the natives. The traveller, therefore, soon learns many an artifice by means of which he can convey to his host the impression that he is consuming more of the dish than is actually thecase, for the fullest justice must be done to the meal, and every possible sign of repletion should be exhibited after it. Dessert, consisting of figs, or of honey and walnuts (to be eaten together), with cups of black coffeeterminate the repast.
The meal which I have described above is of the kind which we were offered daily during our wanderings in the hills, but, as we shall find later on, fax more elaborate banquets are provided by the richer chieftains of the Aures and the desert.
But meals were not the only functions to which we were invited at Beni Ferah, for we enjoyed there, during a later visit, several opportunities of attending wedding ceremonies in the capacity of invited guests, opportunities which revealed fewer differences than we had anticipated between the weddings of the Arabs of El Kantara and those of their Shawia neighbours in the hills. Let us choose for description a wedding scene at Beni Ferah as typical of similar ceremonies all over the massif.
One gloriously sunny afternoon we proceeded, in response to a pressing invitation, to an open space amid the houses on the hillside, where we found assembled a very numerous company of men, women, and children, several hundreds at least squatting upon the ground, or perched upon any such point of vantage as a ruined wall or the flat roofs of the surrounding houses, listening to the weird strains of a couple of tom-toms and an oboe played with extraordinary vigour by three musicians hired for the purpose, stringed instruments being unknown in the hills, before whom a professional danseuse from the valley of the Wed Abdi moved slowly backwards and forwards, moving her feet, hands, and abdominal muscles in the singularly ungraceful movements of a native dance.
Many of the people present had merely turned up to look on, but those who were guests at the ceremony had donned clean garments for the occasion, the women folk being especially resplendent in clean cotton dress material and glittering with every ounce of locally made silver jewellery which they could obtain, their bright silken head scarves adding a fine note of colour to the scene, which, from its very setting upon the sunlit hillside with a panorama of steep juniper-studded slopes and towering rocky peaks behind it, was brilliant enough in its simple splendour.
Accommodated with halfa-grass mats upon which to sit, we took our places among the crowd, and listening to the strains of the "music," the weird tremulous cries of the women, and the occasional firing of blank charges from muzzle-loading guns, infrequent owing to a difficulty in obtaining the powder which the native so dearly loves to hear "speak" upon festal occasions of all kinds, we awaited the time when the bride should be brought from her home, a few hundred yards distant, to the house of the bridegroom, before which we were sitting. Some considerable time elapsed before any movement was made to bring her, the crowd meantime being engrossed in the antics of the professional dancer, whose swaying form now seemed to endeavour to symbolize the bashfulness of the bride-to-be, and now the voluptuous passion of the young wife.At every pause in her dance, and often even as she moved, male members of the assembled crowd came forward and thrust their offerings, in the form of French notes, under her turban upon her brow—she must have been carrying as much as a hundred francs in this manner upon several occasions, although she frequently removed the money and concealed it in her garments as she danced—while the musicians, too, came in for very generous treatment from their audience. The crowd during this part of the ceremony was quiet enough, the only incident which occurred being a fight between two small girls, one of whom was carrying upon her back a child, probably her brother, who gravely maintained his jockey-like seat until the conflict had been brought to a close, amid the tears and, it must be confessed, oaths of the combatants by the interference of their relatives. The bridegroom had meantime attracted much the same amount of attention as does the bridegroom at an English wedding, but, conscious of his own lack of importance, perhaps, he was not even present for more than a very few minutes at the dance!
A wedding among the Shawia is a ceremony for the bride, and the bridegroom is expected to figure in it scarcely at all; indeed, if, while wedding music resounds in a village of the Aures, the traveller should encounter a group of young men all dressed in their best, wandering from cafe to cafe, and appearing to be ignorant of the fact that anything unusual is going forward, he may safely assume that this is the bridegroom and his particular friends, whom custom compels to hold aloof from the ceremony. At length, after two or three female members of the bridegroom's family had joined in the dancing and had been greeted with cries of encouragement from the women, but with no pecuniary offerings from the men, they being respectable members of the community, a move was made to fetch the bride. The musicians led the procession, followed by a mule, across whose saddle was spread a bright red rug, and behind the mule came a number of gaily-dressed women, singing as they went.
We moved with the crowd in the wake of this little procession. Upon arrival at the cottage of the bride, for she came of humble parentage, the musicians, the mule, and the crowd came to a halt, only the femaleattendants who had been singing and the professional dancer entering the house, my wife accompanying them at the request of the bride's relations.
In the semi-darkness of the little house she found a crowd of women and children, who filled the place to overflowing; some of the women singing, some dancing, others emitting the strange quivering cry which is theirnote of rejoicing at festivals. In the midst of this turmoil the bride, a child of about twelve years old, was being bedecked with new garments, the gift of the bridegroom, for her journey to her new home.
The poor child was far too overcome by the attentions she was receiving to take much notice of the gift of a necklet of coral, so dear to the hearts of Shawia beauties, which my wife had brought for her, but it was duly placed around her neck, to the envy of her friends, and at last she was carried out, a blaze of gaily coloured silks and muslins, her face hidden by a veil, and placed upon the mule, a boy of about three or four years oldbeing made to ride upon the saddle in front of her, a symbol of the hoped-for sons to come.
The short procession to the bridegroom's house was accompanied by the firing of guns, much singing, and loud cries. Upon arrival at her future husband's door the bride was lifted from the mule and carried in, breaking upon the lintel as she went an egg, that emblem of a fertility which alone can ensure her a protracted residence in her new home.
Once inside, the bride is received by female members of her husband's family with much noise and dancing, but the bridegroom himself only returns home late in the evening, entering his house as unobtrusively as if merely coming in from some everyday excursion or task.
What, may we ask ourselves, are the thoughts of the bride as she enters thus upon her roamed life ? Surely, if the poor child is not too overwhelmed by the noise around her to think of the future at all, they must be some such thoughts as these: " How long before, unwanted though unoffending, I shall pass out in ignominy from the house in which I am acclaimed to-day ?