In the course of the field work which eventually led to the publication of my Ballads, I made it a practice to ask as few leading questions as possible in order to let my informants reveal their own priorities. What emerged was that among the ballad-mongers who did not specialise in the epic cycle of the Hilālīs, by far the most popular themes were accounts of ‘honour crimes’ in which fierce retribution is visited upon women who offend against the strict (if unequal) code of conduct still prevalent among the masses. Closely allied were other feats of bravery and violence, mainly motivated by revenge. Following at some distance were ballads of a religious character, either embroidering a Qur>anic story or recounting the deeds of a holy man.

Not once was I volunteered a song celebrating some national event and reflecting the kind of loyalty to the state that is very much in honour among the educated modernists – what Albert Hourani has defined as ‘territorial nationalism’ to distinguish it from pan-Arabism or pan-Islamism.

One of my informants was Muḥammad Ramaḍān Sayyid Aḥmad, known as Abū Ðrā<, that is, ‘the One-Armed’. He was of peasant stock. His first home had been with his mother and stepfather, but when he was about five years old his father – whom he had not known before – claimed him and took him to Uṭūr in the district of Kafr iš-Šēx near Ṭanṭā in the Delta.