Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/398

 37^ Cairene Folklore.

what they were to do. He ordered them each to lie one night by the side of a corpse. They did so, and their off- spring have ever since had a corpse-Hke smell."

The hot sulphur springs at Helwan, near Cairo, are accounted for by the following story, which was told me by a native of the place : —

" Solomon discovered a place underground from whence springs of water arose. So he made a great furnace there, appointing an afrit to feed it with fuel in order that the springs should always rise boiling to the surface of the ground. But the afrit was deaf, and when they came to him and said : ' Solomon is dead ' {Sulii7idn mat), he replied: 'Bring dry fresh wood' {Ndshif tari, hat!). Accordingly the fire still continues to be fed and the spring to be hot."

This is but an adaptation of one of the many Jewish legends which found their way into Mohammedanism in the early days of its history, and upon which the Arab imagination has since played freely. They are frequently recounted by the Cairene story-tellers. Here, for example, are one or two others : —

" Nimrod wished to be worshipped as a god, and there- fore the Lord sent a mosquito which buzzed in his brain, and tormented him day and night. His only relief was to have his head beaten with a hammer. At last he was advised to have his head cut off and replaced by another. He follow^ed the advice and died." ^

" David, king of the Beni-Israil, had forty sons. They were all married on the same day. But on the night of the wedding they all died. When David learnt it in the morning, he said : ' It is the will of God.' So a prophet was sent to tell him that as he had been patient, a son

This legend is widely spread in the Mohammedan world, and is traceable to the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgames, in which the satyr Ea-bani is slain by a gadfly.