Women’s Elegies in the Bedouin Negev-and around It

Women’s mourning practices in the Bedouin Negev include the traditional elegy, that has always existed alongside orthodox religion as a form of popular religion, often frowned upon, especially by men. The elegies are of two types: public and personal, but they are not exclusive and one may flow into the other in sequence. We present a close analysis of one personal elegy and one which starts in the public mode. then shifts to personal. Then we conduct preliminary comparisons of these Negev elegies with women’s elegies in three other Arabic-speaking communities in Israel: North Palestinian (Galilean), Christian and Druze on the one hand and Jewish Yemenite on the other. Analysis shows the language of elegy in the Negev to differ considerably from spoken Negev Arabic: as a sub-genre of Bedouin (nabati) poetry, the elegy displays distinct lexicon, grammar, prosody and motifs belonging to the poetic interdialect. These are not shared with elegy language in non-Bedouin communities. Shared elegiac motifs in the communities we sampled include loss of a woman’s freedom upon the death of her male custodian, concern over conditions in the grave and the wish to come and take care of the dear one.