Page:Mythology Among the Hebrews.djvu/124

84 real life down to the present day. Still, as twelve centuries ago, the Bedâwî alone are quite strictly entitled to the name al-‘Arab or al-‘Orbân (Arabs), and the Arabic poetry of the townsmen is found to have its locality still in the desert. The old Arabic poet in forming his poetical figures always likes best to carry the camel in his thoughts. With the camel the great majority of his best similes are connected. In one verse the poet compares himself to a strong sumpter camel; and in the very same line he, the camel, milks the breast of Death, which again is regarded as a camel. Time is a camel sinking to earth, which crushes with its thick hide him on whom it falls; a thirsty camel, which in its eagerness for water (here men) swallows everything. War and calamity also are camels. The poet Ḳabîḏa b. Jâbir cries to his adversaries in praise of the valour of his own tribe: 'We are not sons of young camels with breasts cut off, but we are sons of fierce battle,' where, according to the interpretation of the native commentator, the 'young camels with breasts cut off' are meant to denote ' weak kings, who provoke the ardour of battle in a very slight degree.' How frequently, too, has the comparison of men with camels both in a good and in a bad sense been employed! Even in the nomenclature of places, and wells in the Arabian peninsula the camel often comes in, probably often as the result of comparisons of which the details have not been preserved. The host of stars is to the nomad a flock, which feeds by night on the heavenly*pastures, and in the morning is led back to the fold by the shepherd. A poet describing the length of a night, exclaims: 'A night when the stars move slowly onwards, and which extends to such a length that I say to myself "It has no end, and the shepherd of the stars will not come back to-day." ' Hartwig Derenbourg finds the same view expressed also in Ps. CXLVIL 4,