A Journey to the Valley of the Assassins
the genuine note was only heard when they came to speak
of Kaiumars, their legendary king, who first built the Rock,
said they. No doubt in a winter's evening one might collect
many an old tale, but I think that the lords of the castle
would scarcely figure in them.
Meanwhile the sunlight came to us from the west.
Through its level shafts we descended across the meadows,
and talked of hunting-eagles with Mahmud, while Ismail,
ahead of us with the mules, sang the melancholy ballads of
the charvardars. They seemed to be hendecasyllables, three
rhymes like the quatrains of FitzGerald, a long sad story of
Miriam of Tanakabun. Here as among the Arabs song
still springs naturally out of men's daily life; the incidents
of the market, the gossip of the valley, are woven into
ballads as they come: ever retouched and readapted to
their modern background, they keep their original substance
perhaps through centuries, like the ballad of Rosmunda the
Gothic princess, which, in modern garb, is still sung by
Italian peasants in the hills of Piedmont.
I had promised the policeman a visit, so that after a talk
to the ladies of the house, and another futile effort for the
baby's welfare, I went with the two boys across the river-
lands to the police house in Mahmudabad. My luggage
had been thoroughly gone through in my absence, and had
disclosed nothing more criminal than a Persian grammar,
so that I found both the police and the Arbab as cordial as
possible. The little office contained a table and chair, but
we sat independently of them on the floor, and were presently
joined by an elderly unshaven man who proved to be not
only interested but also intelligent in old castles, and told
me so much of the one above Shirkuh and its reservoirs
and the ruins of ancient water channels that I made tentative
suggestions about a journey to investigate and was only
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