Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/462

 432 Notes fr 0711 Armenia.

wheat in her bins, she wants bread on her bread-hooks, and she wants rain from God." The boys take up contributions at the rich houses.

At Ourfa the children, in times of drought, make a rain- bride, which they call Chinche-gelin. They say this means in Turkish " shovel-bride." They carry the bride about and say, "What does Chinche-gelin w'ant?" "She wishes mercy from God ; she w^ants ofTerings of lambs and rams." And the crowd responds, " Give, my God, give rain, give a flood." The rain-bride is then thrown into the water.

At Harpoot they make a man-doll and call it " Allah- potik." I cannot find out the meaning of the last half of this name. The doll is carried about with the question, " What does Allah-potik want?" "He w^ants rain from God ; he wants bread from the cupboard ; he wants meat from dish ; he wants boulgou?' from bins ; salt from the salt- cellar ; money from the purse." Then they all cry out, " Give, my God, rain, a flood."

At Trebizond, as we were told, they make a rain-dolly. The children dress it up as a bride and veil its face. They ask money from the people. I was unable to find out whether the dolly was thrown into the sea, which is what one would expect from parallel cases.

Now, in reviewing these instances of annual or of occasional rain-charms, it will be seen that the Turkish charms are sharply divided from those practised by the Armenians and Syrians. They belong to different civilisa- tions and to separate stages of human development. The parallel for the Turkish charms, where stones over which incantations have been said are deposited in a stream or pool, especially a sacred pool, as in the case of the Pool of Abraham at Ourfa, will be found in the cases collected in the Golden Bough, vol. i., pp. 109 sqq., which are intro- duced by the following statement : " Stones are often sup- posed to possess the property of bringing on rain, provided they be dipped in water or sprinkled with it, or treated in