Over the Noble Flea!
Mother sad began to cry,
Thrust her needle in her eye;
Could no longer see her thread,
Since she heard the flea was dead.
Then the Father grave and bland,
Hearing this, _cut off his hand_;
And the daughter, when she hears,
In despair, _cuts off her ears_;
And through the town deep grief is spread,
Because they heard the flea was dead.

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.

Sometim