When the people heard these words they remembered the denunciation
of the santon. His prediction seemed still to resound in every ear,
and its fulfilment to be at hand. Nothing was heard throughout the
city but sighs and wailings. "Woe is me, Alhama!" was in every
mouth; and this ejaculation of deep sorrow and doleful foreboding
came to be the burden of a plaintive ballad which remains until the
present day.*

*The mournful little Spanish romance of "Ay de mi Alhama!" is
supposed to be of Moorish origin, and to embody the grief of
the people of Granada on this occasion.


Many aged men, who had taken refuge in Granada from other Moorish
dominions which had fallen into the power of the Christians, now
groaned in despair at the thoughts that war was to follow them into
this last retreat, to lay waste this pleasant land, and to bring trouble
and sorrow upon their declining years. The women were more loud
and vehement in their grief, for they beheld the evils impending over
their children, and what can restrain the agony of a mother's heart?
Many of them made their way through the halls of the Alhambra into
the presence of the king, weeping, and wailing, and tearing their
hair. "Accursed be the day," cried they, "that thou hast lit the flame
of war in our land! May the holy Prophet bear witness before Allah
that we and our children are innocent of this act! Upon thy head,
and upon the heads of thy posterity, until the end of the world, rest
the sin of the desolation of Zahara!*

*Garibay, lib. 40, c. 29.