Note 253 — THE PORTER AND THE THREE LADIES OF BAGHDAD. (continued 2)

I use this Irish term=crying for the dead; as English wants the word for the præfica or myrialogist. The practice is not encouraged in Al-Islam; and Caliph Abu Bakr said, "Verily a corpse is sprinkled with boiling water by reason of the lamentations of the living," i.e. punished for not having taken measures to prevent their profitless lamentations. But the practice is from Negroland whence it reached Egypt; and the people have there developed a curious system in the "weeping-song": I have noted this in "The Lake-Regions of Central Africa." In Zoroastrianism (Dabistan, chapt. xcvii.) tears shed for the dead form a river in hell, black and frigid.