"May a black day come upon your house!" "May the earth
swallow you!" "May you stand before God with a blackened face!" "Break
through into hell!" (_i.e._ through the bridge of Al Sirat); "May you be
drowned in blood!" Besides these curses, all of which are uttered in
anger, the mountaineers have a number of milder imprecatory expressions
which they use merely to give additional force or emphasis to a statement.
A man, for instance, will exclaim to another, "Oh, may your mother die!
what a superb horse you have there!" or, "May I eat all your diseases if I
didn't pay twenty-five _abaz_ for that _kinjal_ ("dagger") in Tiflis!" The
curious expression, "May your mother die!" however malevolent it may sound
to Occidental ears, has in the Caucasus no offensive significance. It is a
mere rhetorical exclamation-point to express astonishment or to fortify a
dubious statement. The graphic curse, "May I eat all your diseases!" is
precisely analogous to the American boy's "I hope to die." Generally
speaking, the mountaineers use angry imprecations and personal abuse of
all kinds sparingly. Instead of standing and cursing one another like
enraged Billingsgate fish-women, they promptly cut the Gordian knot of
their misunderstanding with their long, double-edged daggers, and
presently one of them is carried away on a ladder. When, as a Caucasian
proverb asserts, "It is only a step from the bad word to the kinjal," even
an angry man is apt to think twice before he curses once.

It is difficult to select from the proverbs of the Caucasian mountaineers,
numerous as they are, any which are certainly and peculiarly their own.
They inherit the proverbial philosophy of all the Aryan and Semitic races,
and for the most part merely repeat with slight variations the well-worn
saws of the English, the Germans, the Russians, the Arabs and the French.
I will give, however, a few specimens which I have not been able to find
in modern collections, and which are probably of native invention. It will
be noticed that they are all more remarkable for force and for a peculiar
grim, sardonic humor than for delicacy of wit or grace of expression.
Instead of neatly running a subject through with the keen flashing rapier
of a witty analogy, as a Spaniard would do, the Caucasian mountaineer
roughly knocks it down with the first proverbial club which comes to
hand; and the knottier and more crooked the weapon the better pleased he
seems to be with the result. Wh