Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/376

 35^ Cairene Folklore.

populaires inedits de la Vallec du Nil, traduits de I'Arahe parle, Maisonneuve, 1895). He has divided the stories into five groups, East Aryan, North Aryan, Semitic, Negro (or Sudanese), and Egyptian, the distinguishing trait of the last group being the ridicule into which the conquering race is turned. In this he believes he has found a sure criterion of the native origin of a story. The tales of Negro origin are distinguished by the introduction of a ghul or ogre, while in those of North Aryan or European derivation, animals like the goat or the peacock are referred to, which were once sacred to the deities of paganism, but have in consequence been devoted to the spirit of evil by Christianity and Mohammedanism.

Distinctively Cairene are the stories in which the fel- lahin of Upper Egypt or the Nubians are ridiculed. The townsman thinks himself superior to the peasant, and numerous, therefore, are the stories which are told at the expense of the latter. Moreover, Christianity has lingered among the fellahin of Upper Egypt, while the population of Cairo is essentially Mohammedan. As for the Nubians, they come to Cairo in increasing numbers as domestic servants, and so, as was once remarked to me by a Cairene, " they take the bread out of the mouth " of the natives.

Here are two stories which I have lately heard, and which will illustrate the Cairene feeling in regard to the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia: "God once asked a dead man how old he was, and what he had done while alive. He replied that he was sixty years of age, that he had lived twenty years in the Delta, twenty years in Cairo, and twenty years in Upper Egypt. ' Stop,' said God, For the people of Upper Egypt are like the cattle." The other story is of a similar character : " Two Nubians returning home from Cairo agreed to go shares in the expenses of the journey. When they came in sight of the Qubbet el-Hawa (at Assuan) they made up their accounts,
 * that makes you forty ; Upper Egypt does not count.'