According to the Turks and Syrians, the Kurbat girls are not so chaste as their European sisters; yet they wear till marriage the “lacto diklo,” a certain cloth, in token and in pledge of spotless virginity, which the bridegroom alone is permitted to take off. The women dress like the lower orders in Syria; but they affect more ornaments of silver and brass, ear-and nose-rings, armlets and bracelets, anklets and bangles. They spin, take care of the poultry, ducks, cats, and children, and cook exactly like the English Gypsy women. Especially they tell fortunes, which practice, confined to a certain caste but forbidden to others, seems to be a kind of sacerdotalism. The Kurbat, like their brethren all the world over, have no written characters or symbols for letters or words. Their Shaykh told Newbold that, although they themselves could not write, two men in the tribe could write. As, however, neither the men nor specimens of their writing were produced, the inference drawn from this, and other similar inquiries, was that “the written characters, or symbols, of their language, or rather jargon, have either been lost, or are known to only a few, who superstitiously keep them secret.”[165] In the bazars of Syria they speak Arabic or Turkish; at home they use their own tongue. The following scanty list of Kurbat words was obtained viva voce from the Aleppo tribes, and were subsequently checked by comparison with the tribe near Antioch: VOCABULARY: KURBAT-DUMAN. _Kindred._ _English._ _Kurbat._ _Duman._ Father bábúr bábúr. Mother aida aida _and_ ana. Brother bhairú berávau. Sister bhanu kochi. _Natural Objects._