animals in Mecca and elsewhere, at various stones which were
regarded as idols or as altars of the gods.[1] Sometimes they
killed a human being, such as the four hundred captive nuns of
whom we read that they were sacrificed by al-Mundhir to the
goddess Aphrodite. Sheep are offered up to-day in Palestine: for
instance, if the first wife of a man is barren and the second
wife has children, then the former vows that in return for a son
she will give a lamb. Apparently when it was thought desirable to
be particularly solemn a horse was sacrificed, and this we hear
of with the Persians, Indians, and more western people. White was
held to be the favourable colour, so we read in Herodotus (i.
189) that the Persians sacrificed white horses. In Sweden it was
thought that a black lamb must be dedicated to the water sprite
before he would teach any one to play the harp. As for the
subsequent fate of the victim, Burton tells us that the Moslems
do not look with favour on its being eaten. Unlike them, Siberian
Buriats will sacrifice a sheep and boil the mutton and hoist it
on a scaffold for the gods, and chant a song and then consume the
meat. So, too, the zealous devil-worshippers of Travancore, whose
diet is the putrid flesh of cattle and tigers, together with
arrak and toddy and rice, which they have previously offered to
their deities.

The words of Abu'l-Ala concerning day and night (_quatrain_ 2)
may be compared with what he says elsewhere:

These two, young for ever,
Speed into the West--
Our life in their clutches--
And give us no rest.