] All kinds of songs are represented; the rondeaux of
children whose inspiration is alike in all countries:

[2] Hanoteau, Poesies Populaires de la Khabylie du Jurgura, Paris, 1867,
8vo.

"Oh, moonlight clear in the narrow streets,
Tell to our little friends
To come out now with us to play--
To play with us to-night.
If they come not, then we will go
To them with leather shoes. (Kabkab.)[3]

"Rise up, O Sun, and hie thee forth,
On thee we'll put a bonnet old:
We'll plough for thee a little field--
A little field of pebbles full:
Our oxen but a pair of mice."

"Oh, far distant moon:
Could I but see thee, Ali!
Ali, son of Sliman,
The beard[4] of Milan
Has gone to draw water.
Her cruse, it is broken;
But he mends it with thread,
And draws water with her:
He cried to Ayesha:
'Give me my sabre,
That I kill the merle
Perched on the dunghill
Where she dreams;
She has eaten all my olives.'"[5]

[3] A sort of sandal.

[4] Affectionate term for a child.

[5] Hanoteau, v. 441-443.

In the same category one may find the songs which are peculiar to the
women, "couplets with which they accompany themselves in their dances; the
songs, the complaints which one hears them repeat during whole hours in a
rather slow and monotonous rhythm while they are at their household labors,
turning the hand-mill, spinning and weaving cloths, and composed by the
women, both words and music."[6]

One of the songs, among others, and the most celebrated in the region of
the Oued-Sahal, belonging to a class called Deker, is consecrated to the
memory of an assassin, Daman-On-Mesal, executed by a French justice. As in
most of these couplets, it is the guilty one who excites the interest:

"The Christian oppresses. He has snatched away
This deserving young man;
He took him away to Bougre,
The Christian women marvelled at him.
Pardieu! O Mussulmans, you
Have repudiated Kabyle honor." [7]

[6] Hanoteau, Preface, p. iii.

[7] Hanoteau, p. 94.

With the Berbers of lower Morocco the women's songs are called by the Arab
name Eghna.

If the woman, as in all Mussulman society, plays an inferior role--inferior
to that allowed to her in our modern civilizations--she is not less the
object of songs which celebrate the power given her by beauty:

"O bird with azure plumes,
Go, be my messenger--
I ask thee that thy flight be swift;
Take from me now thy recompense