Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/409

 Cairene Folklore. 389

of supernatural beings of an uncanny nature, except the ginn^ and they are always harmful, though some are more dangerous than others. The term is sometimes used of a demon or devil, sometimes of what we should call a ghost. Thus, if a man is murdered, his afrit rises from the ground where his blood has been shed. It can, however, be pre- vented from doing so by driving a new nail which has never been used into the ground at the spot where the murder has been committed.

Similarly, if an afrit haunts a place where there is a stain of blood, it can be laid by driving an iron nail through the mark of the blood.

The pyramids of Giza are at present haunted by the afrit of a British soldier who was killed by falling down one of them in 1882, and whose eyes are described as looking like " globes of fire." The road in front of a pumping engine near the palace of Giza (which is now removed) was haunted by the afrit of a man who had been killed by the machinery, and which kept on repeating the last words he had said.

When my servant Mustafa was a boy, a palm-tree at Old Helwan was haunted by the afrit of a man who had fallen from it and been killed.

At the southern end of the island of Roda at Cairo is a deserted house, which no one will inhabit because it is haunted by an afrit, and at the northern end of the same island is a kiosk which is deserted for the same reason.

An afrit, however, can be turned out of a haunted house by placing a little bread and salt in it.

On the other hand an afrit is also a demon, and the cause of demoniac possession. An afrit, for instance, who possessed a woman in Cairo a few years ago, caused her to cry " stretch my feet and hands ! " until she was tired. At last a shekh, " who was a good man, walking uprightly and able to read," compelled the afrit to leave her by tying her thumbs and great toes together ; the afrit asked to be