Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/331

 Oil the Orioiu of the Egyptian '' ZavT 301

notes, taken among the fellahin of Lower Egypt, also used the word in both senses.

Judging by all the zar and ceremonies like them that I have been able to compare in North and Central Africa I believe that though the word comes from Abyssinia, the ceremony as practised in Egypt at the present day has been introduced by black slaves from the Negro tribes of Tropical Africa, and though comparable to the practices in vogue in Abyssinia is not derived from them. There is no doubt that words are carried very far by means of a lingua franca like Arabic, their origin forgotten and their meaning extended and changed. Thus kojur is used throughout the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to mean " medicine man " whether he be rainmaker, magician or sorcerer ; nor is this a recent practice, for it was used in this sense by Baker. Indeed, so widely has the word spread that the ordinary Arabic-speak- ing Sudani does not realise that it is not Arabic, and almost any Egyptian officer will tell you that it comes from Kor- dofan, the White Nile, the Bahr el-Ghazal, or any province he happens not to have visited.

Descriptions of two ceremonies are to be found in Niya Salima's extremely interesting book. The authoress relates that her Negro servant was possessed by a spirit who caused the woman to limp because it — the 'familiar' — objected to her mistress wearing black clothes. On going into the matter Madame Salima discovered that the great majority of black women had familiar spirits whom they speak of as their asiad, " masters." " They (the spirits) come from the Sudan, Hejaz and Egypt and elsewhere, but all are evil and to be feared." - Certain women called Sheykhat (sing. Sheykha) or Kudiyat (sing. Kudiya) '' claim powers of deal- ing with spirits. When a woman becomes possessed (some slight indisposition is generally the first sign) she consults

• Harems ct Miisulnianes cTEgypte, p. 260.

'"Goudia negresse sorciere et e.xorciste, comme les sheikhas," op. cil., p. 257. Goudia is obviously another transliteration of the same word.