1903] • A Dogs Grave 43 



there is any merit at all in the Abu Zeyd cycle. I could see that these 

 gentlemen despised me for admiring it. 



" 14th March. — There has been a very large wolf in the garden 

 for the last week or ten days, which has been hanging about the 

 tents at night, where the sheep are folded just outside our wall. 

 There are several flocks here just now as there is no pasture in the 

 hills, and the wolf has come in with them probably. We have seen 

 him more than once by daylight, and at night he has howled near the 

 house. Two nights ago, however, a dozen new tents were pitched 

 just outside with a quantity more sheep belonging to the Howeytat 

 on their way back from the Riff, where they have been at bersim. 

 The wolf came upon them about midnight. There was a terrible 

 noise of dogs barking and men shouting and shots fired. In the morn- 

 ing I went out to see what had happened, and old Eid came to me 

 from the Assara and told me they had shot the wolf, and a little 

 further off I saw a group of Arabs digging a grave, as I thought 

 for the dead wolf. On coming close, however, I found it was no 

 wolf but a large dog, very old and very lean and covered with blood. 

 They told me that it was a mad dog which had rushed in among 

 the sheep and which they had killed. The singular part of the story, 

 however, is that they have not only buried the dog, but have made 

 up a regular grave for it exactly like a Moslem grave with tall bones 

 set up at either end and neatly trenched. It is a new thing for me 

 that a dog should be thus honoured, one I should have thought im- 

 possible in a Mohammedan country. Suliman, whom I set to find out 

 the truth about it, says they buried the dog for fear that their own dogs 

 should eat it and so go mad, but it does not explain the grave. 



" 15^/1 March. — Our Mowled of Sheykh Obeyd. There were pres- 

 ent the four chief Sheykhs of the villages round as well as Yusuf 

 Abu Shenab, Hassan Musa el Akkad, and a number more important 

 neighbours in addition to the Arabs. Professor Browne, who had 

 lunched with us, came on for the festival. The feast was a general 

 one, the poor of all our four parishes being fed. One incident only 

 marred it in the display of horsemanship. Hamdan, an Agheyli from 

 Bereyda, got his arm hurt with a jerid to which a point had been 

 maliciously given with a nail, and he accused Mutlak of the treachery, 

 but though Mutlak had given the blow it had been given with one of 

 a number of jerids got ready for the occasion, and it was probable 

 a trick was played on him through jealousy. The wound, though only 

 a scratch, has produced much ill-feeling. 



" I have finished my Moallakat translation with Anne, and an intro- 

 duction to the volume. We hope to get it published during the summer. 



" 16th March. — Arabi lunched with us and remained talking the 

 whole afternoon. He gave me a full account of the events of 1881-82, 



