Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/529

Rh a waiter in a family at Helwân, where one evening a bottle of wine was wanted. Accordingly he sent the “marmiton”, or scullion, who was a grown-up man, into the cellar for the wine, with a lighted candle. As the scullion did not appear he went to see what had happened, and found the cellar in darkness, with the candle and a broken bottle lying on the ground. Presently he discovered the scullion in the kitchen shivering with terror. The scullion informed him that after entering the cellar he put the candle on the floor, and stooped down in order to get the bottle of wine, when suddenly an ’afrît blew out the candle and grasped both his arms. Nothing would induce him to return to the cellar. “I am a lad”, said Mustafa, “and you are a man, but I am not afraid to go there”; and accordingly he went, for, he remarked to me, “as long as you are not afraid, you will never see an ’afrît.”

On another occasion Mustafa showed me a small “qarn khartît”, or rhinoceros horn, which, he told me, was priceless. Water drunk from a glass or cup on the inside of which it has been rubbed is a sure antidote to all poisons.

In connection with this belief I may mention an incident that once occurred to me when examining the ancient city-wall, which still remains on the northern side of the mounds of Memphis. I had picked up a piece of decaying palm-wood, which had served to bind the wall together, and observed that my example was followed by a boy, who had attached himself to me. I asked him what he was going to do with the wood. He replied that he intended to mix it with “mummy”, in order to make of it a potent “medicine”. It is curious to find the old belief in the medicinal virtues of “mummy” still lingering on the spot from whence so many mummies were formerly exported to the physicians and druggists of Europe.

An older superstition was brought to my notice just before I left Egypt this winter. “If you buy a dahabiah”, I was told, “you must kill a sheep, letting the blood flow on the deck or side of the boat, in order that it may be lucky. Your friends will afterwards have to dine on the sheep.”

 from the Greek Island of Calymnos.—

Pregnancy.—A pregnant woman is not allowed to step over a grave. People who do not give to pregnant women food for which they have a lect (as it is called) are liable to have styes in their eyes.

Birth, etc.—Women are not allowed to remain in a room alone during the forty days after confinement. They take no bath during this period. The bath taken on the fortieth day, and which purifies, is prepared by boiling certain herbs, laurel, thyme,, and others, and must be as hot as the patient can bear. When the