on what day she was to be married, she professed not to
know anything about it. They think it is not modest for a bride to care
anything about the wedding, and she will try to appear unwilling to go
when they are ready to start. The women are singing now:

Dance, our bride so fair,
Dance and never care;
Your bracelets sing, your anklets ring,
Your shining beauty would dazzle a king!
To Damascus your father a journey has made,
And your bridegroom's name is Abu Zeid.

And now the young men outside are dancing and fencing, and they all join
in singing:

Dance, my dancer, early and late,
Would I had like you seven or eight;
Two uncles like you, blithe and gay,
To stand at my back in the judgment day!

And now the young men, relatives of the bridegroom, address the brother
of the bride, as her father is not living, and they all sing:

O brother of the bride, on a charger you should ride;
A Councillor of State you should be;
Whene'er you lift your voice,
The judgment halls rejoice,
And the earth quakes with fear
From Acre to Ghuzeer.

And now the warlike Druzes, who are old friends of Shaheen and his
father, wish to show their good will by singing a wedding song, which
they have borrowed from the old wild inhabitants of this land of
Canaan:

O brother of the bride, your mare has gnawed her bridle,
Run for the blacksmith, do not be idle.
She has run to the grave where are buried your foes,
And pawed out their hearts with her iron shoes!

But the time has come for the procession to move, and we go along slowly
enough. The bride rides a mare, led by one of Shaheen's brothers, and as
we pass the fountain, the people pour water under the mare's feet as a
libation, and Handumeh throws down a few little copper coins to the
children. The women in the company set up the zilagheet, a high piercing
trill of the voice, and all goes merry as a marriage bell. When we reach
the house of Shaheen, he keeps out of sight, not even offering to help
his bride dismount from her horse. That would never do. He will stay
among the men, and she in a separate room among the women, until the
hour of the ceremony arrives.

But the women are singing again, and this time the song is really
beautiful in Arabic, but I fear I have made lame work of it in the
translation:

Allah, belaly, belaly,
Allah, belaly, belaly,
May God spare the life of your