Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/266

Some of these wild-eyed, neurotic, semi-imbecile creatures belong to a type which is familiar enough all over the world, and which you may meet with in every costume and under every sky. Nature only too plainly proclaims them the congenital victims of some one or other of the many forms of hysteria. When these men jerk their heads in concert from side to side, accompanying each jerk with a grunt like that which punctuates every thud of a pavior's rammer; when they groan in unison; when they gasp and pant and croon in response to the whining quaver of the old precentor in a filthy turban and frowsy gaberdine, who "deacons off" the extraordinary choir; when, above all, they bow till their bodies are bent double, each of them flinging forward his dirty mane till its ends almost touch the ground and then throwing it back again over his shoulders—you can see that the thing is genuine, or at any rate as much so as such manifestations of religious excitement ever are. For