Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/529

 Correspondence. 493

corner was thoroughly scrubbed, every depository emptied, and every cistern cleansed. So far so good. Those who know the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem rejoice at any circumstance which enforces cleanliness. The patient, attended by an old woman only, kept silence and was confined to one room. This room, as well as all the others, was decorated with flowers and sweet-smelling herbs, while sweetmeats of various kinds were placed all over the house. (Another form of the Momia includes performances upon musical instruments by skilled players, introduced at intervals, and was happily not employed in the present instance.)

The climax of the treatment consisted in the purchase, under special conditions and at a high price, from a foreign merchant in the Spice Bazaar, of " the dried skin of a negro who had died in the desert," which was boiled, and the liquor given to the girl as medicine. Good results were reported. The father, an intelligent shoemaker, sensibly remarked that, seeing the girl was needing sleep and rest, the expulsion of the inmates for seven days and nights from the overcrowded house would probably have done her good, even without the rest of the ceremonial.

A. M. Spoer.

Mother-Right in Early Greece. {Ante, pp. 277-291.)

The following should be appended to the last sentence of paragraph one under Traditional Genealogies etc., on p. 283, as a footnote to the words "why, among the numerous cults of heroic ancestors, do we hear so little of heroines; and, especially, why are few, if any, tribes or clans called after them."

"The only case I know of is the Argive and Epidaurian tribe Hymethia, named apparently from the heroine Hymetho ; and the evidence for this is weak. (Grote, History, vol. ii., p. 280, quotes besides Steph. Byz., only Pansanius, Bk. ii., xxviii. 3, which mentions merely a place called Hymethion.)"

H. J. Rose.