Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/354

 I 0)1 the Origin of the Egyptian '' ZarT

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and they beat the drum and clap hands. At that time Waddegenni possesses the tongue of the woman and talks, saying: ' In such and such a place I have come upon her; and now make me dance so and so many days, and play such and such a tune for me ! ' And they make him dance as many days as he says, all of them. And on the last day they make an appointment with him after how many days he is to return. And he says : ' I shall return after two or three years.' And they make him swear that he will not come before that time, saying : ' If thou doest wrong, not keeping this term and coming before it, mayest thou not reach thy people and mayest thou be wronged, die by thy own weapon ! ' And he says ' Amen ! ' And then they prepare roasted corn and red pepper for him as his viaticum. And after he has eaten a little of it, he dances a little and falls down. Thereupon they rub the neck of the woman with the back of some iron weapon. And having led her to her house they make her enter. The woman recovers at once, and they say ; ' Waddegenni has left her.' But in the year about which they have agreed with him he returns and dances a second time, and they play for him the tune which he wishes. And if he wishes a violin or a flute, they play it also for him. And they put the trinkets which he desires on the woman. But some die through him, if they do not find anybody to make him dance for them. And after- wards, if the woman has died, Waddegenni takes her body and makes her work for him or sells her to the demons. [This is what] they say."-*

We have thus before us the possibility of a double origin of the zdr, namely from Abyssinia and from the Sudan. The word without doubt is Abyssinian, and must have been recognised in Egypt before the opening of the Sudan by Mohammed Ali and the consequent importation of black slaves. How far the belief in the Abyssinian spirits had

^ Enno Littmann, Ptiblications of the Princetrnvn Expedition to Abyssinia (1910, Leyden), voi. ii., p. 310 et seq.