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The Arabs are generally thin, meagre figures, though possessing expressive and sometimes handsome features; great violence of gesture and muscular action; irritable and fiery, they are unlike the dwellers in towns and cities; noisy and loud, their common conversational intercourse appears to be a continual strife and quarrel. They are, however, brave, eloquent, and deeply sensible of shame. Major Denham once knew an Arab of the lower class refuse his food for days together, because in a skirmish his gun had missed fire; to use his own words, "Gulbi wahr, (my heart aches,) Bin-dikti kadip hashimtui gedam el naz. (my gun lied, and shamed me before the people.)" Much has been said of their want of cleanliness; they may, however, be pronounced to be much more cleanly than the lower orders of people in any European country. Circumcision, and the shaving the hair from the head, and every other part of the body; the frequent ablutions, which their religion compels them to perform; all tend to enforce practices of cleanliness. Vermin, from the climate of their country, they, as well as every other person, must be annoyed with; and although the lower ranks have not the means of frequently changing their covering, for it can be scarcely called apparel, yet they endeavour to free themselves as much as possible from the persecuting vermin. Their mode of dress has undergone no change for centuries back, and the words of Fenelon will at this day apply with equal truth to their present appearance. "Leurs habits sont aisés a faire, car en ce doux climat on ne porte qu'une piece d'étoffe fine et légère, qui n'est point taillée et que chacun met

Our argument is that the widely distributed myths in which a husband or a wife transgresses some 'custom' sees the other's face or body, or utters the forbidden name might well have arisen as tales illustrating the punishment of breaking the rule. In this story the son of a Boulogne pilot marries the daughter of the King of Naz wherever that may be.

In Naz a man is never allowed to see the face of his wife till she has borne him a child a modification of the Futa rule. The inquisitive French husband unveils his wife, and, like Psyche in Apuleius, drops wax from a candle on her cheek.

When the pair return to Naz, the king of that country discovers the offence of the husband, and, by the aid of his magicians, transforms the Frenchman into a monster. Here we have the old formula the infringement of a 'taboo, and the magical punishment adapted to the ideas of Breton peasantry.

The essential point of the story, for our purpose, is that the veiling of the bride is 'the custom of women, in the mysterious land of Naz.