Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/238

 228 Some Algerian Siiperstitions.

been described among other writers by Professor Wester- marck," who has devoted a paper to them in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and by Lane, who says, in his Matmers and Customs of the Modern Egyptians: "The ginn are said to be of pre-adamite origin, and, in their general properties, an intermediate class of beings between angels and men, but inferior in dignity to both, created of fire, and capable of assuming the forms and material fabric of men, brutes and monsters, and of becoming invisible at pleasure,"^

Charms Against the Evil Eye.

The belief in jenoun seems to be closely bound up with the dread of the " evil eye," against which many of the charms we collected were worn.

A certain Shawi scribe in the Rassira valley of the Aures, who enjoys quite a wide reputation as a writer of charms and a foreteller of the future, informed me that among his people the belief is held that when the admiring glance leaves the eye it is joined by a jinn, who accompanies the glance to the object admired, and causes the harm which is popularly supposed to befall the person or thing upon whom the "evil eye" has been cast. This theory should help to make clear the reasons for the use of some of the charms worn as a protection against the "evil eye" which would otherwise seem to be obscure.

Some charms, such as the little manuscript texts sewn up in leather which are worn for almost every conceivable purpose by man, woman, child, and even some animals in Algeria, possess in themselves virtue which protects the

^Westermarck, "The Nature of the Arab Ginn illustrated by the Present Beliefs of the People of Morocco" {Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxix).

^Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians ("Everyman's Library" ed. ), p. 228.