Emily’s reply, “Oh! papa, let us hear it by all means!” anticipated and ensured the old gentleman’s consent. Demetri acted as leader, and beat the time with a cane in his hand, which he every now and then allowed to descend pretty sharply on the shoulders of any luckless wight who did not open his jaws and his throat to the utmost extent at the recurrence of the burden or chorus which terminated every verse.
The orchestra consisted of a miserable apology for a kettle-drum (called in Egypt a darabooka) played by a fellow who swayed his head and shoulders backwards and forwards to the time of the song. The tone was so strange and its vibrations so shrill as the fellow half shut one eye and threw up his head sideways to strain his voice to the utmost pitch, that Emily was fain to put up her handkerchief to her face, to hide the laugh which she could not resist, and shield her ears from the dissonant shrillness of the sound. When, however, he came down from these indescribable counter-tenor heights[[32]] to a more natural tone, and Emily was able to follow the cadence of the song, especially of the wild and irregular chorus which terminated every verse, she began to find it more tolerable, and afterwards even pleasing in its effect.
Hassan being called upon by Mr Thorpe to explain the words, felt not a little confused; for independently of the fact that his knowledge of English was imperfect, it is certain that these songs of the Nile boatmen are extremely difficult to translate, sometimes from the elliptical vagueness of their language, sometimes from its plain and unveiled indecency; he succeeded, however, in giving the general meaning of the song, which cast roughly into English rhyme would run as follows:—
“O night! O night! O night! you’re better far than day;
O night! O night! O night! the Eastern sky is grey;
O night! O night! O night! a little longer stay;
To the girls of Damanhour speed on our homeward way.
Chorus.
The girls of Damanhour, like young gazelles at play,
The girls of Damanhour, none half so fair as they.