A mountain[2] we have where dwells he whom we shelter there, lofty, before whose height the eye falls back blunted: Deep-based is its root below ground, and overhead there soars its peak to the stars of heaven whereto no man reaches. A folk are we who deem it no shame to be slain in fight, though that be the deeming thereof of Salool and ´Ámir; Our love of death brings near to us our days of doom, but their dooms shrink from death and stand far distant. There dies among us no lord a quiet death in his bed, and never is blood of us poured forth without vengeance. Our souls stream forth in a flood from the edge of the whetted swords: no otherwise than so does our spirit leave its mansion. Pure is our stock, unsullied: fair is it kept and bright by mothers whose bed bears well, and fathers mighty. To the best of the uplands we wend, and when the season comes we travel adown to the best of fruitful valleys. Like rain of the heaven are we: there is not in all our line one blunt of heart, nor among us is counted a niggard. We say nay when so we will to the words of other men, but no man to us says nay when we give sentence. When passes a lord of our line, in his stead there rises straight a lord to say the say and do the deeds of the noble. Our beacon is never quenched to the wanderer of the night, nor has ever a guest blamed us where men meet together. Our Days[3] are famous among our foemen, of fair report, branded and blazed with glory like noble horses. Our swords have swept throughout all lands both west and east, and gathered many a notch from the steel of hauberk-wearers; Not used are they when drawn to be laid back in the sheaths before that the folk they meet are spoiled and scattered. If thou knowest not, ask men what they think of us and them —not alike are he that knows and he that knows not. The children of Ed-Dayyán are the shaft of their people’s mill, —around them it turns and whirls, while they stand midmost.[4] The renown of the clan was closely wrapped up with the Arab chieftain’s personal renown. He was keenly sensitive on the point of honour, and to that notion he attached a breadth of meaning which can scarcely be understood in these days. Honour included all the different virtues that went to make up the ideal Bedawee. To be proved wanting in any of these was to be dishonoured. Above all things, the man who would ‘keep his honour and defile it not’ must be brave and hospitable— A rushing rain-flood when he gave guerdons: when he sprang to the onset, a mighty lion.