Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/256

 246 So?ne Algerian Superstitions.

acquainted with the effect of artillery. The jenoun which cause outbreaks of less serious complaints are known as " Arabs," and these do little real harm, their attacks, there- fore, being more comparable to the old-time forays of Arab raiders than to the operations of a modern army.

When an epidemic occurred, the scribe informed me, the people used to leave their village and flee to the forests of Aleppo pines in the higher parts of the mountain, whither they found the army of jenoun could not pursue them. This led them to the belief that the jenoun dislike the Aleppo pine, a belief which induces the Shawia to wear pieces of its wood upon necklets in order to keep off the " evil eye," as I have noted above, and (according to the scribe) accounts for the very general use of the pitch of the Aleppo pine and cedar (which also grows in the high forests) in Shawia medicine. The jenoun dislike the smell of this pitch, and they also dislike the bitter taste of certain herbs, such as rue {Fzjil), harmel {Peganum JiarDialiivi), and colocynth {Haandhal), which are largely employed in medicine. The canine tooth of a dog, which I have noted as being worn against the " evil eye," is worn by the town-dwellers of El Kantara and by the Ouled Ziane to protect the health ; and I find from the sheet of manuscript given to me by a Shawia doctor that the front teeth of a dog are regarded as a cure for talking in sleep, are suspended over a man suffering from jaundice, and will prevent dogs from barking at the person who wears them ; while the other teeth of a dog hung over a baby are believed to facilitate teething.

As I have suggested before, a supposed fear of dogs on the part of jenoun may account for the use of the teeth in some of these cases ; for a living scorpion, enclosed in a reed, is suspended round a child's neck to prevent crying, because, my Shawi informant told me, the jinn which causes the cry- ing is likely to be afraid of a scorpion, and a Shawia woman whose children always die in infancy will wear a scorpion