the Semitic and Ouralo-altaique tongues; the extreme Orient, and the modern
literature of the Old and New World.

But the manifestations of thought, in popular form, are no less curious and
worthy of study among the Berbers. I do not speak of the treatises on
religion which in the Middle Ages and in our day were translated from the
Arabic into certain dialects: that borrowed literature, which also exists
among the Sonalulis of Eastern Africa and the Haussas and the Peuls of the
Soudan, has nothing original. But the popular literature--the stories and
songs--has an altogether different importance. It is, above all, the
expression of the daily life, whether it relates to fêtes or battles or
even simple fights. These songs may be satirical or laudatory, to celebrate
the victory of one party or deplore the defeat of the True Believers by the
Christians, resounding on the lips of children or women, or shouted in
political defiance. They permit us, in spite of a coarse rhythm and
language often incorrect, an insight into their manner of life, and to feel
as do peoples established for centuries on African soil. Their ancestors,
the Machouacha, threatened Egypt in the time of Moses and took possession
of it, and more than twenty centuries later, with the Fatimides, converted
Spain to the Mussulman faith. Under Arab chiefs they would have overcome
all Eastern Europe, had it not been for the hammer of Charles Martel, which
crushed them on the field of Poitiers.

The richest harvest of Berber songs in our possession is, without doubt,
that in the dialect of the Zouaous, inhabiting the Jurgura mountains, which
rise some miles distant from Algiers, their crests covered with snow part
of the year.[2] All kinds of songs are represented; the rondeaux of
children whose inspiration is alike in all countries:

[2] Hanoteau, Poésies Populaires de la Khabylie du Jurgura, Paris, 1867,