Like public performers everywhere, a story-teller of note always goes about with regular assistants, who act as summoners to his entertainment, and as chorus to his songs. They consist usually of a player on the native fiddle, another who keeps time on a tambourine, and a third who beats a kind of earthenware drum with his fingers. Less pretentious "professors" are content with themselves manipulating a round or square tambourine or a two-stringed fiddle, and to many this style has a peculiar charm of its own. Each pause, however slight, is marked by two or three sharp beats on the tightly stretched skin, or twangs with a palmetto leaf plectrum, loud or soft, according to the subject of the discourse at that point. The dress of this class--the one most frequently met with--is usually of the plainest, if not of the scantiest; a tattered brown jelláb (a hooded woollen cloak) and a camel's-hair cord round the tanned and shaven skull are the garments which strike the eye. Waving bare arms and sinewy legs, with a wild, keen-featured face, lit up by flashing eyes, complete the picture.
This is the man from whom to learn of love and fighting, of beautiful women and hairbreadth escapes, the whole on the model of the "Thousand Nights and a Night," of which versions more or less recognizable may now and again be heard from his lips. Commencing with plenty of tambourine, and a few suggestive hints of what is to follow, he gathers around him a motley audience, the first comers squatting in a circle, and later arrivals standing behind. Gradually their excitement is aroused, and as their interest grows, the realistic semi-acting and the earnest mien of the performer rivet every eye upon him. Suddenly his wild gesticulations cease at the entrancing point. One step more for liberty, one blow, and the charming prize would be in the possession of her adorer. Now is the time to "cash up." With a pious reference to "our lord Mohammed--the prayer of God be on him, and peace,"--and an invocation of a local patron saint or other equally revered defunct, an appeal is made to the pockets of the Faithful "for the sake of Mulai Abd el Káder"--"Lord Slave-of-the-Able." Arousing as from a trance, the eager listeners instinctively commence to feel in their pockets for the balance from the day's bargaining; and as every blessing from the legion of saints who would fill the Mohammedan calendar if there were one is invoked on the cheerful giver, one by one throws down his hard-earned coppers--one or two--and as if realizing what he has parted with, turns away with a long-drawn breath to untether his beasts, and set off home.