Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/97

 The Powers of Evil in Jerusalem. 69

" grottoes," are the holy places of every sect, and are inhabited by saint or jinn as the case may be. Mothers who have no milk, married couples who are childless, resort thither, although in some cases they have been abandoned by the Moslems on account of the nature of the orgies, and are frequented mainly by Christians and a few Jews. The specially famous cave under Mt. Carmel, dedicated to El Chadr (the Green One), who is recognised by some as Elias, by others as St. George, is resorted to by all classes, sects, and nationalities.

Spirits and apparitions still reveal themselves under sacred trees as to Abraham and Gideon. Sometimes such a tree is sacred per se ; one near Gaza-el-Maisi is inhabited by a spirit, and receives divine honours just as Abraham " planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of Yahweh." Sometimes it is sacred by association only, like " the oak of the pillar that was in Shechem," or like the oak of Moriah under which Abraham built an altar to Yahweh. The fellahin leave ploughs, building materials, harness, and other property, in such places for safety. When a shrine is associated with a tree it is doubly sacred, and many serve to this day precisely the purpose described in 2 Chron. vi. 22-24, and even in so highly civilised a town as Besan, perhaps the most pleasing in all Palestine, orderly, well-built, well-governed, many a lawsuit is averted because the people are satisfied to go to the wely, the shrine of the local saint, and, as before the altar in Solomon's Temple, to swear innocence or reveal guilt, and receive judgment accordingly ; now, as then, there is no appeal from this judgment.

Trees have also curative properties. The power of self- suggestion and telepathy are still fully utilised and appreciated in the East. A shred torn from the patient's garment and hung on the tree transfers the disease ; in the same way a shred taken from it serves, like the hand- kerchiefs and aprons from the body of St. Paul,'^for the