Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/410

 390 Caircne Folklore.

allowed to come out of her through the eyes, but this was not allowed ; then through the hands, but this also was forbidden ; and finally it came out through the little toe, which was broken.

Mustafa's mother was possessed by an afrit whenever she was irritated, which caused her to laugh immoderately. The afrits do no harm to those who are not afraid of them. When my servant Mustafa was a waiter in the hotel at Helwan he one day sent an under-servant into the cellar with a candle, in order to get some bottles of wine. He waited a long time, but the man did not return. On going to see what was the matter he found the cellar empty and a bottle of wine lying broken upon the ground. The man explained that just as he was stooping to get the bottle an afrit blew the candle out and grasped his arms ; he rushed away in his terror, and nothing would induce him to return to the cellar. " I am a boy," said Mustafa, " and you are a man, yet I am not afraid to go there," and he accordingly got the wine that was necessary, " for as long as you are not afraid you will never be hurt by an afrit ^

An afrit, however, seems often to be little more than a sort of mischievous Puck. Mustafa's father, for example, had a mill for grinding corn attached to his house at Old Helwan ; at night an afrit would come and turn the handle of the mill, and so injure it, as no corn was underneath to be ground. One night his father put his head out of the window and saw the afrit, which immediately disappeared, since " an afrit does not like to be seen." When there was no light and the ox was grinding the corn, the afrit would come, unloose the animal from the mill, and take it outside. One night during the summer, when Mustafa was sleeping with his older relatives in the court outside the house on account of the heat, his aunt saw the afrit pass along the wall, with its arms extended, into the ynandara or reception-room beyond ; but when his father took a light and went to see what was there, nothing was visible.