DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11637#0351
AND LOWER EGYPT. 323
a three-stringed lute, and a tambour de basque.
Two women usually dance together. In the
interval between their capers, they stop facing
each other, approach, and vie for some moments
in this brisk agitation of the loins to the measure
of the music. This most impudent exhibition of
a lascivious spectacle was highly pleasing to a
depraved and unpolished people. It always
attracted a number of spectators j and the women
took great delight in looking at it through their
blinds, and thus receiving lessons of immorality.
The same dancers have a little basin on the
thumb and fore-finger of each hand, which they
strike against each other like castanets in regular
cadence. Their faces are bare; and this, as has
been said, is the height of impudence in these
countries. Accordingly they are prepared and
accustomed to a trade still more dishonourable
than that of performing lascivious dances in
public. Most of them wear a ring in one of the
nostrils. They conclude their dances with a kind
of music far from agreeable. Letting down their
veils, and holding their ears with both hands,
they sing, or rather scream, with all their might.
The dancers are succeeded by jugglers, whom I
have seen perform the same tricks as ours in
Europe, and with the same dexterity. Tumblers
y 2 likewise
a three-stringed lute, and a tambour de basque.
Two women usually dance together. In the
interval between their capers, they stop facing
each other, approach, and vie for some moments
in this brisk agitation of the loins to the measure
of the music. This most impudent exhibition of
a lascivious spectacle was highly pleasing to a
depraved and unpolished people. It always
attracted a number of spectators j and the women
took great delight in looking at it through their
blinds, and thus receiving lessons of immorality.
The same dancers have a little basin on the
thumb and fore-finger of each hand, which they
strike against each other like castanets in regular
cadence. Their faces are bare; and this, as has
been said, is the height of impudence in these
countries. Accordingly they are prepared and
accustomed to a trade still more dishonourable
than that of performing lascivious dances in
public. Most of them wear a ring in one of the
nostrils. They conclude their dances with a kind
of music far from agreeable. Letting down their
veils, and holding their ears with both hands,
they sing, or rather scream, with all their might.
The dancers are succeeded by jugglers, whom I
have seen perform the same tricks as ours in
Europe, and with the same dexterity. Tumblers
y 2 likewise