May the mosque and the minaret, dome and all,
On her wicked head in anger fall!
May the Arabs rob her threshing floor,
And not one kernel remain in her store.

The servant girl Nideh, who attends the Sit Leila, thinks that her turn
has come, and she is singing,

We've the white and the red in our baby's cheeks,
In pounds and tons to spare;
But the black and the rust,
And the mould and the must,
For our neighbor's children are!

I hope she does not refer to _us_ for we are her nearest neighbors. But
in reality I do not suppose that they actually mean what they sing in
these Ishmaelitic songs. Perhaps they do when they are angry, but they
probably sing them ordinarily without thinking of their meaning at all.

Sometimes snakes come down from the ceilings of these earth-roofed
houses, and terrify the people. At other times government horsemen come
and drag them off to prison, as they did in Safita. These things are
referred to in this next song which Nideh is singing:

If she love you not, my boy,
May the Lord her life destroy!
Seven mules tread her down,
Drag her body through the town!
Snakes that from the ceiling hang,
Sting her dead with poison fang!