They
Light A Fire At Night, And As The Insects Fall Dead They Quote This
Couplet To Justify Their Being Eaten—
“We are allowed two carrions and two bloods,
The fish and locust, the liver and the spleen.[FN#55]”
Where they have no crops to lose, the people are thankful for a fall of
locusts. In Al-Hijaz the flights are uncertain; during the last five
years Al-Madinah has seen but few. They are prepared for eating by
boiling in salt water and drying four or five days in the sun: a “wet”
locust to an Arab is as a snail to a Briton. The head is plucked off,
the stomach drawn, the wings and the prickly part of the legs are
plucked, and the insect is ready for the table. Locusts are never eaten
with sweet things, which would be nauseous: the dish is always “hot,” with
salt and pepper, or onions fried in clarified butter, when it tastes
nearly as well as a plate of stale shrimps.
The favourite food on the line of march is meat cut into strips and
sun-dried. This, with a bag of milk-balls[FN#56]
[p.118] and a little coffee, must suffice for journey or campaign. The
Badawin know neither fermented nor distilled liquors, although Ikhs ya’l
Khammar! (Fie upon thee, drunkard!) is a popular phrase, preserving the
memory of another state of things. Some clans, though not all, smoke
tobacco. It is generally the growth of the country called Hijazi or
Kazimiyah; a green weed, very strong, with a foul smell, and costing
about one piastre per pound. The Badawin do not relish Persian tobacco,
and cannot procure Latakia: it is probably the pungency of the native
growth offending the delicate organs of the Desert-men, that caused
nicotiana to be proscribed by the Wahhabis, who revived against its
origin a senseless and obsolete calumny.
The almost absolute independence of the Arabs, and of that noble race
the North American Indians of a former generation, has produced a
similarity between them worthy of note, because it may warn the
anthropologist not always to detect in coincidence of custom identity
of origin. Both have the same wild chivalry, the same fiery sense of
honour, and the same boundless hospitality: elopements from tribe to
tribe, the blood feud, and the Vendetta are common to the to. Both are
grave and cautious in demeanour, and formal in manner,—princes in rags or
paint. The Arabs plunder pilgrims; the Indians, bands of trappers; both
glory in forays, raids, and cattle-lifting; and both rob according to
certain rules. Both are alternately brave to desperation, and shy of
danger. Both are remarkable for nervous and powerful eloquence; dry
humour, satire, whimsical tales, frequent tropes; boasts, and ruffling
style; pithy proverbs, extempore songs, and languages wondrous in their
complexity. Both, recognising no other occupation but war and the
chase, despise artificers and the effeminate people of cities, as the
game-cock spurns the vulgar roosters of the poultry-yard.[FN#57] The
[p.119] chivalry of the Western wolds, like that of the Eastern wilds,
salutes the visitor by a charge of cavalry, by discharging guns, and by
wheeling around him with shouts and yells.
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