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!