Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/175

Rh the indignities to which those Yezeedees were subjected who were forced into the army, and complained that they were not only ill-treated and persecuted by the Turkish soldiers, but were made to put on uniform of a colour which it was unlawful for any of their community to wear, and moreover to eat prohibited food, and to frequent the bath, which for them was a sin. I understood afterwards that the colour objected to was blue, especially dark blue; and that the prohibited vegetables were lettuce and cabbage. A new levy of soldiers was about to take place, which seemed to cast a gloom over Sheikh Nâsir and the Yezeedees generally.

"On leaving the chief told us that he should spend the night with the Kawwâls in the shrine of Sheikh Mohammed, where the principal religious ceremonies were to be performed. What those were we could not learn, but were told that they danced to the music of the tambourines and flutes. This evening none of the cattle were milked, but all the cows, sheep, and goats with their young were turned out into the fields, and permitted to feast themselves at their pleasure.

"April 19th.—This morning the sound of fife and drum at dawn of day announced that the recreative part of the festival had commenced; so after an early breakfast we repaired to the vicinity of the shrine near which a large concourse of Yezeedees had already assembled, all habited in their best holiday suits. The men were clad in clean and gaudy-coloured jackets and turbans, the women in silk and satin garments, their necks hung round with ornaments, and their head-dresses covered with rows of silver coin. All carried in their turbans a bouquet of flowers, among which the rose and anemone were the most conspicuous, interspersed with an occasional ostrich feather dyed scarlet. About two hundred now joined hand in hand and formed themselves into a ring round a couple of musicians who played on a drum and kind of lute. The merry strain was at first slow, but quickened as it proceeded, the dancers the meanwhile keeping time with their arms which were thrown violently backwards