"We halted a week at Wilensi to feed,--in truth my companions had been
faring lentenly at Harar,--and to lay in stock and strength for the long
desert march before us.
A Somali was despatched to the city under orders
to load an ass with onions, tobacco, spices, wooden platters, and Karanji
[2], which our penniless condition had prevented our purchasing. I spent
the time collecting a vocabulary of the Harari tongue under the auspices
of Mad Said and All the poet, a Somali educated at the Alma Mater. He was
a small black man, long-headed and long-backed, with remarkably prominent
eyes, a bulging brow, nose pertly turned up, and lean jaws almost
unconscious of beard. He knew the Arabic, Somali, Galla, and Harari
languages, and his acuteness was such, that I found no difficulty in what
usually proves the hardest task,--extracting the grammatical forms. "A
poet, the son of a Poet," to use his own phrase, he evinced a Horatian
respect for the beverage which bards love, and his discourse, whenever it
strayed from the line of grammar, savoured of over reverence for the
goddess whom Pagans associated with Bacchus and Ceres. He was also a
patriot and a Tyrtaeus. No clan ever attacked his Girhis without smarting
under terrible sarcasms, and his sneers at the young warriors for want of
ardour in resisting Gudabirsi encroachments, were quoted as models of the
"withering." Stimulated by the present of a Tobe, he composed a song in
honor of the pilgrim: I will offer a literal translation of the exordium,
though sentient of the fact that modesty shrinks from such quotations.
"Formerly, my sire and self held ourselves songsters:
Only to day, however, I really begin to sing.
At the order of Abdullah, Allah sent, my tongue is loosed,
The son of the Kuraysh by a thousand generations,
He hath visited Audal, and Sahil and Adari [3];
A hundred of his ships float on the sea;
His intellect," &c. &c. &c.
When not engaged with Ali the Poet I amused myself by consoling Mad Said,
who was deeply afflicted, his son having received an ugly stab in the
shoulder. Thinking, perhaps, that the Senior anticipated some evil results
from the wound, I attempted to remove the impression. "Alas, 0 Hajj!"
groaned the old man, "it is not that!--how can the boy be _my boy_, I who
have ever given instead of receiving stabs?" nor would he be comforted, on
account of the youth's progeniture. At other times we summoned the heads
of the clans and proceeded to write down their genealogies. This always
led to a scene beginning with piano, but rapidly rising to the strepitoso.
Each tribe and clan wished to rank first, none would be even second,--what
was to be done? When excitement was at its height, the paper and pencil
were torn out of my hand, stubby beards were pitilessly pulled, and
daggers half started from their sheaths.
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