# Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894/Notes on the Quarterly Statement April 1894

NOTES ON THE "QUARTERLY STATEMENT."
By Major C. E. Conder, R.E., D.C.L., &c.
P. 102. The Phœnicians do not seem to have reached England or the Canaries before about 600 B.C. The texts in the latter islands are Numidian, and not very ancient.
P. 106. The texts at Quarantana are in characters of the 12th or 13th century A.D.
P. 119. The fragment from Gebal resembles the well-known type of the Cybele or Diana of Ephesus. Ribadda of Gebal was the son of a Phœnician King. He was not an Egyptian, but a native tributary prince. He wrote not 13 but 50 letters in the Tell Amarna collection.
P. 127. The idea that Moslems had a peculiar odour, removed by baptism, is found as early as 1432 a.d., in the travels of Sir Bertrandon de la Brocquière, speaking of the Turks in Asia Minor.
P. 127. The translation of the fellah songs and sayings in this valuable paper seems to be sometimes incorrect, and fails to show their force—and sometimes their sadness. The rhymes naturally are lost in translation. The following renderings may be worthy of consideration, in cases where the meaning seems least to be brought out:—
P. 134. "Whiter than snow is the fair white robe, White rice boiled in white milk, Ill luck befell. They brought me a white healer, He bared the wound and found the wound white."
Like many marriage songs this is mysterious.
P. 135. The song appears to be a regular war song, such as is common in Palestine.
'Your foes are slain' was the news to Damascus, 'O King, King's son victory is thine. And a return of fortune.' Let us go to the foeman's home and destroy it, And carry its stones to Kerak. He would have ruled us—not till we perish!
P. 136. The customs (like others in Palestine) recall very primitive ones all over Asia, which antiquaries call survivals of "Marriage by Capture"—a real or simulated fight for the bride.
P. 138. The proverb, "Snake and stick," occurs in Samaritan literature as "Snake and cane." ​P. 139. The "untying the shoe" is very interesting in connection with the Levirate ceremony of "loosing the shoe," which is not confined to the Jews. The shoe is intimately connected with weddings in the mythology and folk-lore of all Asiatics.
P. 141. The dirge of a hunter seems modern in form.
The gun rusts with dew, There is the gun, the hero has not come. There is none to clean the gun. O, youth, forbid to breathe the breeze, There is nought to snare in the grave,
The woman's dirge appears to run—
Hamdah was precious as silver, O, Hasan, buy her; Weigh the coin and buy her—
P. 137. The tales of heroes sung at marriages would be very interesting to collect: in some cases they are probably taken from books, such as are read in the Lebanon, but if they are merely oral they might be valuable.
The war song which records the news being sent to Damascus to a "King" seems to be probably ancient, going back to the 8th or 9th
​century, when the Khalifs ruled in Damascus, or at least to the times of Nûr ed Din and Saladin when ruling there. The tribal wars between the Fellahin and the Arabs of Kerak, and beyond Jordan, continued, however, till the present century, as I have shown in the Memoirs—"Taiyibeh"(Vol. III).