Page:Folk-lore of the Holy Land.djvu/131

wise, and so we may learn from them.” So it happened one day, that some of them wanted to carry a long beam of wood into a chamber where they wished to put up an oil-press. Try as they would, they could not get it in because they carried it stretching across the entrance instead of taking it through endwise. Being greatly troubled, they sent twelve men in different directions to try to get some hint from the methods used by animals. The messengers returned after seven days, but only one had found a solution of the problem. This he got from having noticed a sparrow draw a long straw endways into a hole in which it was building its nest. As a reward for this discovery the man was made sheykh of the community.

Because they would not use the common-sense which Allah has given to the sons of Adam that they may excel other creatures in wisdom, He decreed that they should all die childless with the exception of one family, possibly that of the aforesaid sheykh, whose descendants still live at Bethany. And even on them there rests a curse, for they never have more than one son to represent them.

In the cliff that towers above the railroad on the northern side of the savage Wady Isma’ìn just east of ’Artûf, is a large cave which bears evident traces of having once served as an abode for ascetics. It