Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/39

 MIDSUMMER CUSTOMS IN MOROCCO.

BY EDWARD WESTERMARCK, PH.D.

{Read at Meeting, yth December, 1904.)

The present article is based on information which I have obtained in the course of three years and a half devoted to anthropological research in Morocco, chiefly among its peasantry.

The population of Morocco consists of the following ethnic groups : — The Arabic-speaking tribes of the plains (the ^Arab); the Arabic-speaking mountaineers of Northern Morocco (the Jbdla), in whose veins, in spite of their language, probably flows much more Berber than Arab blood ; the Rif Berbers {Rudfa), whose country extends along the Mediterranean coast from the neighbourhood of Tetuan to the Algerian frontier ; the Berbers {Brdber) in- habiting the mountains of Central Morocco and the eastern portion of the Great Atlas range ; the Berbers {Shluh) inhabiting the western part of the Great Atlas, as also the Sus country situated to the south of that range (a territory the eastern frontier of which may be roughly indicated by a line drawn from Demnat in a south-easterly direction, and the northern frontier by a slightly curved line uniting Demnat with Mogador on the Atlantic coast and following the foot of the mountains, or, in some places, intercepting a strip of the plain) ; and, lastly, the Berbers {Draiua) in- habiting the valley of the Wad Dra in the extreme south of Morocco, a group with reference to which I have been unable to procure any reliable information. I have been