Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/461

Rh come to the subject of occasional rain-charms, such as are used in times of drought.

The Turks have a rain-charm which consists of throwing pebbles into water. At Egin they gather pebbles and place them in two bags; in their extravagant way, they say that there must be 70,001 pebbles, of which I do not see the meaning. Over these pebbles they say some incantations. The bags are carried down to the Euphrates by two men and suspended in the water. This is done regularly at Egin in dry seasons. At Ourfa the Turks carry stones to be blessed by the Hodja at the Mosque of Abraham. They then take the stones and throw them into the Pool of Abraham (Birket el Khalil), where the sacred fish are still kept and fed. This does not seem to vary much from the custom at Egin.

At Ourfa we came across a survival of the custom of throwing a man into the water; for we were told that in dry seasons they dig up the body of a recently buried Jew, abstract the head and throw it into the Pool of Abraham. We shall have another instance, later on, where the head of a sacrificial animal does duty for the whole body.

I come now to a rain-charm which is much nearer to the forms recorded in the Golden Bough, which appears to be very widely diffused.

At Egin, when rain is wanted, the boys take two sticks in the form of a cross, and with the addition of some old clothes and a cap they make a rain-dolly. This figure they carry round the town, and the people from the roofs of the houses throw water on it. They call the dolly the "Chi-chi Mama," which they interpret to mean "the drenched mother." As they carry the dolly about they ask, "What does Chi-chi mother want?" The reply is, "She wants wheat, boulgour" (cracked wheat), &c. "She wants