Note 183 — Chapter VIII · IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE CRUSADERS
Reading edition
Sismondi, writing of the Eastern story-tellers, among whom are women as well as men, informs us they sometimes “excite terror or pity, but they more frequently picture to their audience those brilliant and fantastic visions which are the patrimony of the eastern imagination.... The physicians frequently recommend them to their patients in order to soothe pain, to calm agitation or to produce sleep after long watchfulness; and these story-tellers, accustomed to sickness, modulate their voices, soften their tones and gently suspend them as sleep steals over the sufferers.” Historical View of the Literature of Southern Europe, Vol. I, p. 62 (Bohn Edition).