CHAPTER XXII

154. 25-6. la chanson de la Bédouine. Hère is the song as it is translated in Englisb by Richard F. Burton, Pilgrimagc to El-Mcdinah and Mecca (1856), chapter XXVII:

O takc thèse purple robes away,

Give back my cloak of camel's hair, And bcar me from this tow'ring pile

To whcrc the Black Tents flap i' thc air. The camel's coït with falt'ring tread,

The dog that bays at ail but me, Delight me more than ambling mules —

Than every art of minstrelsy.

And any cousin poor but free,

Might takc me, fatted ass! from thee.

The story is that Moraviah (or Muawiyah), overhearing the song, sent back thc singer to her cousins and beloved wilds. Maysunah, the wife, departed with her son Yczid and did not rcturn to Damascus till the "fatted ass" had joined his forefathers.