"[6]
One of the songs, among others, and the most celebrated in the region of
the Oued-Sahal, belonging to a class called Deker, is consecrated to the
memory of an assassin, Daman-On-Mesal, executed by a French justice. As in
most of these couplets, it is the guilty one who excites the interest:
"The Christian oppresses. He has snatched away
This deserving young man;
He took him away to Bougre,
The Christian women marvelled at him.
Pardieu! O Mussulmans, you
Have repudiated Kabyle honor." [7]
[6] Hanoteau, Preface, p. iii.
[7] Hanoteau, p. 94.
With the Berbers of lower Morocco the women's songs are called by the Arab
name Eghna.
If the woman, as in all Mussulman society, plays an inferior role--inferior
to that allowed to her in our modern civilizations--she is not less the
object of songs which celebrate the power given her by beauty:
"O bird with azure plumes,
Go, be my messenger--
I ask thee that thy flight be swift;
Take from me now thy recompense.
Rise with the dawn--ah, very soon--
For me neglect a hundred plans;
Direct thy flight toward the fount,
To Tanina and Cherifa.
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