Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/83

Rh blessing of this country, has come to be a symbol of power. During many months in the year, even in one's hotel, it is cheaper to buy two or three bottles of good wine than to take an ordinary bath! Moreover, as children are, in the East, "a gift which cometh from the Lord," the idea of power, as represented by water, has come to be associated with that of procreation. Childless couples will go long distances to bathe in certain pools, and barren women visit the hot springs in various districts, not, as might be supposed, for any medicinal properties, but because the jinn who causes the vapour is regarded as being capable, in a definite and physical sense, of giving them offspring; for, like certain Spiritualists of the twentieth century, they believe that both men and women may have intercourse with disembodied spirits, a belief quite as common among Christians as Moslems.

A curious anomaly, however, forbids the patients visiting the hot baths of Tiberias to call upon the Divine name, whether from reverence, the springs being recognised as possessed by spirits, or from policy, so that the Dervishes who recommend their use may have a loophole in case of failure, it would be unfair to determine. Many of the ordinary springs have also their special jinn, and the women, when fetching water, do so, as a rule, with some formula, special to the place—such as dastūr ṣāḥibīn il-arḍ, niḥna fī ḥamā ‘itkum wil-‘ard; bismi-’llah, "With permission, possessor of the earth! We and the earth are under your protection In the Name of God!"

A spring, like a house, may be "possessed," maskūne or maḥḍūra. At Ramallah, a village about eight miles from Jerusalem, is a spring haunted by a spirit in the form of a camel. If the water flows scantily, they say the camel is thirsty; if the water is muddy, they say the camel is wallowing; if the water murmurs, he is moaning. Another spring is occupied by a bride, the jingling of whose