Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/98

 70 The Powers of Evil hi Jerusalem.

cure of the sick unable to present themselves personally ; then, as now, " the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out."

The sacred trees are of various kinds. One of those upon which we have most often seen decorations is the lotus tree {zizyphus spina christi), which however does not assume its sacred character till its fortieth year, when to cut it down or injure it is a gross insult to the wely. The tamarisk tree is often sacred, or at least haunted, and the wind, like " the whispering in the tops of the mulberry trees," is often heard to utter words and phrases as it sighs in their waving branches. The olive tree is sacred, though less often haunted, and palms and cacti have drunk of the water of life, and have in them something of a human element. Fig-trees, sycamore figs, and carrobs (" locust " trees), are, on the other hand, inhabited by jinn. Within a few miles of Jerusalem, however, in a grove of terebinth, a single sycamore fig is the one tree decorated with votive offerings. As in Scotland, it is not good to whistle in haunted places, especially at dusk. Salt is sacred, and a little strewed upon the threshold of a house or room has a good effect, and serves to keep the powers of evil at a distance.^

My last "find" in the way of amulets was that of the jaw-bone of a wolf, worn by a Moslem girl as a protection against a cough. The subject of charms and amulets is however far-reaching, and would need a paper to itself. They are worn by man, woman, and child ; horses, camels, and asses, even the sheep, the goat, the cat, more rarely, the dog, is protected by at least a blue bead, or a morsel of alum sewn up in a blue covering. " The belief in the Evil Eye," writes Philip Baldensperger, than whom no one living better knows the people. of this country, "is certainly very strong among all classes of the population — Christian and Mohammedan, Jew and Gentile. It is stronger than religion."

^Cf. Folk- Lore, vi. 172.