MOORISH REMNANTS.
I.
ISSY-BEN-ARAN.
Though the Moors were always hated in Spain, first as a conquering and afterwards as a conquered race, yet many poetical traces of their traditions and maxims remain in the popular literature of the country; and in some of these they appear in a very advantageous light, though, of course, the national hatred loved rather to record those of a contrary import.
Issy-ben-Aran was a venerable muleteer, well-known in all the towns of Granada for his worth and integrity—an elder and a father among his tribe.
One day, as he was journeying over a wild and sequestered track of the Sierra Nevada, he heard a cry of pain proceeding from the road-side. The good old man immediately turned back to render help to the unfortunate. He found a young man lying among the sharp points of an aloe hedge, groaning as if at the last gasp.
“What ails thee? Son, speak,” said Issy-ben-Aran.
“I was journeying along the road, father, an hour agone, as full of health as you may be, when I was set upon by six robbers, who knocked me off my mule, and not satisfied with carrying off all I possessed in the world, beat me till they thought I was dead, and then flung my body into this aloe hedge.”