“By sun and moon, not I; I ask but to be let eat the food I carry in my wallet. I carry food in my wallet whenever I go upon a journey, but I do not taste of it unless I am well-nigh starved. I have not eaten now these two days.”
“You may eat, then,” says the Coarb, and he turned to help the friars dig the hole.
The gleeman took a loaf and some strips of cold fried bacon out of his wallet and laid them upon the ground. “I will give a tithe to the poor,” says he, and he cut a tenth part from the loaf and the bacon. “Who among you is the poorest?” And thereupon was a great clamour, for the beggars began the history of their sorrows and their poverty, and their yellow faces swayed like the Shelly River when the floods have filled it with water from the bogs.
He listened for a little, and, says he, “I am myself the poorest, for I have travelled the bare road, and by the glittering footsteps of the sea; and the tattered doublet of parti-coloured cloth upon my back, and the torn pointed shoes upon my feet have ever irked me, because of the towered city full of noble raiment which was in my heart. And I have been the more alone upon the roads and by the sea, because I heard in my heart the rustling of the rose-bordered dress of her who is more subtle than Angus, the Subtle-Hearted, and more full of the beauty of laughter than Conan the Bald, and more full of the wisdom of tears than White-Breasted Deirdre, and more lovely than a bursting dawn to them that are lost in the darkness. Therefore, I award the tithe to myself; but yet, because I am done with all things, I give it unto you.”
So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among the beggars, and they fought with many cries until the last scrap was eaten. But meanwhile the friars nailed the gleeman to his cross, and set it upright in the hole, and shovelled the earth in at the foot, and trampled it level and hard. So then they went away, but the beggars stared on, sitting round the cross. But when the sun was sinking, they also got up to go, for the air was getting chilly. And as soon as they had gone a little way, the wolves, who had been showing themselves on the edge of a neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and the birds wheeled closer and closer. “Stay, outcasts, yet a little while,” the crucified one called in a weak voice to the beggars, “and keep the beasts and the birds from me.” But the beggars were angry because he had called them outcasts, so they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then the wolves gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds lighted all at once upon his head and arms and shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the wolves began to eat his feet. “Outcasts,” he moaned, “have you also turned against the outcast?”
THE DRUMS OF KAIRWAN
By the Marquess CURZON OF KEDLESTON
From Tales of Travel, by The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston. Copyright, 1923, by George H. Doran Company.
When the appointed hour arrived, I presented myself at the mosque, which is situated outside the city walls of Kairwan, not far from the Bab-el-Djuluddin, or Tanners’ Gate. Passing through an open courtyard into the main building, I was received with a dignified salaam by the sheik, who forthwith led me to a platform or divan at the upper end of the central space. This was surmounted by a ribbed and white-washed dome, and was separated from two side aisles by rows of marble columns with battered capitals, dating from the Empire of Rome. Between the arches of the roof small and feeble lamps—mere lighted wicks floating on dingy oil in cups of coloured glass—ostrich eggs, and gilt balls were suspended from wooden beams. From the cupola in the centre hung a dilapidated chandelier in which flickered a few miserable candles. In one of the side aisles a plastered tomb was visible behind an iron lattice. The mise en scène was unprepossessing and squalid.
My attention was next turned to the dramatis personae. Upon the floor in the centre beneath the dome sat the musicians, ten or a dozen in number, cross-legged, the chief presiding upon a stool at the head of the circle. I observed no instrument save the darabookah, or earthen drum, and a number of tambours, the skins of which, stretched tightly across the frames, gave forth, when struck sharply by the fingers, a hollow and resonant note. The rest of the orchestra was occupied by the chorus. So far no actors were visible. The remainder of the floor, both under the dome and in the aisles, was thickly covered with seated and motionless figures, presenting in the fitful light a weird and fantastic picture. In all there must have been over a hundred persons, all males, in the mosque.