Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/96

 68 The Powers of Evil in Jerusalem.

an Ethiopian Christian as representing Joseph, the Virgin and Child. The Arab name for the fruit is tuffdh magdnin, "apples of the insane." I cannot discover why.

The high places, sacred tombs, sacred trees, do not present many special features of folk-lore other than one finds elsewhere in the East, except perhaps, like so much in this country, as illustrating and interpreting the folk-lore of the Bible. Thus on a Thursday, the eve of the Moslem Sabbath, the spiritually-minded passing by the neighbour- hood of a sacred tree often see it in flames, as did Moses, who saw the bush which burned and was not consumed. Food is offered to the genms loci by Bedu on reaching a new camping ground, and is commonly hung on the branches of sacred trees, just as bread and wine were offered by the Israelites to Yahweh.^ Piles of stones, commemorative or reminder, are found all over the country, and are receiving daily additions from the hands of the pious, and I know of some half-dozen places which no one passes without adding his tribute to the existing Eben-ezer. Standing-stones are erected to-day, as at Beth-el; and others, of which the origin is forgotten, are regarded as sacred, like the Jachin and Boaz of Solomon. The Rock worship so obviously recognised in Deut. xxxi. and other passages exists still, and now as, probably, then, one is told that the rock is merely symbolic, and that the saint is honoured spiritually and apart. Apparitions, bear- ing messages, appear " to those who have light in their hearts " as to the ancient prophets, telling now, as then, of matters of public weal — the cholera, the plague, the new railway.

The mazehoth condemned in the Deuteronomic code, and figuring over and over again in sacred history, may be seen all over the country, and in every landscape you may note the high places crowning the hill tops and resorted to by Moslem, Jew, and Christian alike. Caves, here called

^ Ex. xxix. ; Lev. xxiii. ; Num. xv., etc.