Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/296

288 At Blidah, a small town about 40 miles distant from Algiers, the women arrange this head covering in such a manner that one eye only is visible. Their out-door costume appears to be such an effectual disguise that it seems to us that any man might pass his own wife in the street and not recognise her.

Both secular and religious dances are performed in Algeria; the former are executed by persons hired for the purpose, who are indispensable adjuncts at Moorish weddings; on these occasions the musicians are not unfrequently negro women, their instruments are a small drum composed of an earthen tube or a jar closed at one end by a piece of bladder, a pair of rude castanets, and a stringed instrument or two somewhat like the banjo in form. The musicians seat themselves cross-legged on the ground, the dancers are women who are attired as a Moorish lady would be when at home; their movements are slow, and resemble those of the nautch girls in the plains of India, yet there is a vast difference between the two styles; the Moorish woman, as a rule, takes longer steps than her Indian sister, she also waves her arms in a different manner, and she not unfrequently holds a gauze scarf in both hands, and uses it to assist her in forming various figures. It would appear, however, that at a distance from the capital, in the smaller towns of Algeria, the women who dance at weddings are not always hired performers, for once, when staying at Tenez, a small town about 100 miles west of Algiers, we chanced to pass a native house where wedding festivities were going on, and were invited to enter it. The gentlemen of our party were ushered into the men's apartment, and the lady was shown into an inner room on the women's side of the court-yard, which served as a sort of green-room for the dancers. Before she went out to dance in the court-yard, each woman was enveloped by her companions in a dark-coloured garment of printed muslin which covered her from head to foot, her hands even were not visible, the sleeves of this dress were very long and tied tight at the ends, so that the hand and arm were enclosed as in a bag, several of her friends assisted at her toilet, to the European observer her disguise looked impenetrable, and yet one woman came back again almost immediately, and throwing off her