[302] Castanets.—Crotola are found in Egyptian tombs.—Dennis, vol. ii. p. 45.
[303] Compare this with Rev. xxii. 17: “And let him that heareth say, Come,” &c.
CHAPTER V.
THE TENT AND “HOME.”
Few sounds awaken more pleasing associations than the tent of the Arab. Palace, castle, tower call up visions of events; but “tent” drives the imagination back upon itself to discover in its own nature the resemblances and the method of the noblest men and the simplest manners. The tent, not the camel, is the ship of the desert; the moveable home that makes the strangest spot familiar, the wildest habitable. One other word alone can be placed beside it—our English “Home.”
Engaged in this reflection I inquired the Arabic name, and was answered, Heyme! Home is in English an exotic. It is used adverbially as well as substantively. It applies in a manner inconsistent with a fixed abode, and evidently pertains to the system of Celtic ministry and nomade habits, rather than to feudalism. It belongs to a family with a moveable habitation.
Home stands by itself as the name of a place—“Ham House,” “the Ham Town,” as in Northampton, Nottingham, Buckingham, Hampstead. I had observed that such names generally applied to a low, or a protected site. In the Highlands of Scotland, within the memory of man, the pasturage was distributed between the two seasons; the cattle being taken to the higher regions in the summer, the lower portions being reserved for their support during the winter. The shieling was erected for the farm service in the summer; the homestead, or hame, was the winter abode; I had, therefore, concluded that home or hame was derived from hyems. I had been struck by a similar analogy in the Turkish word for castle, kishla, from kish. Winter was first applied to the solid buildings of the winter farm as contrasted with the yazin, or light shielings erected on the summer pasturage.
This word, so peculiarly English, is not confined to England. It is used nearly in our adverbial sense throughout the north of Europe, and in our topographic sense in France. There is Ham, de Ham, as the names of places, and every village is their hameau.
In Africa we have the same thing. El Ham, the name of a place (Algeria). Hamma (Breber) for village, or quarter of a town. In Judæa, hammoth, hamma, Laga.[304] The home of Arab independence is Tihama.[305]
There could not be in French, English, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Breber, a word implying both a state of weather and a habitation, by accident. In the early times there was no difficulty in transferring usages and names. Each region was not replenished, nor each tongue complete.
Hayme may come either from heat or cold; it may mean “the hot” or the “shady” place. Chem or Ham, also, is hot. Ham was the name given to Egypt from its black soil. In northern India, Hima is cold.[306] Home serves as protection against cold and snow—against sun and heat. The tent may appear to us, with our city habits, the most primitive of dwellings; but in considering the matter I should, I think, have arrived at an opposite conclusion, even if we had not had another distribution laid down in the oldest of books. There is first the emblem of a garden—a refuge under its bowers; next, in the person of Cain, comes the planting of seeds; then follows close, Abel tending the most peaceable of milk-giving animals—sheep. A third generation arrives, who make dwellings: they build a city. A period of multiplication elapses, and then Adah bears unto Lamech, Jabal, the “father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle.” The nomade life was, therefore, a variety; and the subjecting of cattle to the plough was the second agricultural state, where wandering and shepherd tribes settled themselves down on pleasant lands which they had discovered, or in territories they had overrun. Jabal’s brother was Jubal, the inventor of the harp and minstrelsy. Joyousness then followed the tent; and immediately after comes industry with its forges and its cares, its sweats and profits; and Tubal Cain taught men to smelt and puddle, and presented them with brass and steel.