Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/506

196 their laxity of morals the people themselves offered strenuous opposition, "alleging that such a measure would impair the abundance of the crops."

My own notes on this subject, obtained during various visits to the Abdi valley, are as yet very scanty. Certain it is that many unmarried girls and the very numerous divorcees of the tribe do lead an immoral life, that this is not regarded as in any way shameful by the majority of their fellow tribesmen—though a few are to be found who disapprove of it—and that, in the capacity of danseuses, these women pursue their calling in the villages of neighbouring tribes as well as in their own. So common is vice among these people that, in the surrounding country, to refer to women as Ulad Abdi is equivalent to calling them prostitutes. It seems impossible that so marked a contrast should exist between tribes of a common origin as that to be found, in this respect, between the Ulad Abdi and their neighbours, unless it originates from the pursuit of some now forgotten religious observance, such as the worship of a goddess of fertility.

Yet it is extremely difficult to understand why such an observance should not have extended in the past to the kindred tribes around, or, if ever it did so extend, why it should have disappeared from among them and persisted in the Abdi valley, an area geographically no more or no less liable to outside influences than the valleys to the east or to the west of it.

I hope when I resume my researches in the field to glean further information, fragmentary though it must be, which may shed light on the origin of these customs of the Ulad Abdi, and also, if possible, of the Ulad Nail, a tribe of Arabic-speaking nomads who wander over the Sahara to the south-west of Biskra and whose customs are somewhat similar.

Assuming Bertholon and Chantre to be correct in re-