Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/257

 Some Algeria7i Superstitions. 247

in a reed, or wrapped up in cotton rag, suspended from her girdle over her stomach, presumably in order that the child as yet unborn may be protected as early as possible against the attacks of the jenoun who have compassed the death of its predecessors.

A Shawi informed me that in order to cure a child of uncleanly habits in the night it is sufficient to cause it to ride once upon the neck of a camel (a rare beast in the Aures), whose grunts of protest against this unusual placing of a burden will frighten away the jinn which has caused the child to offend. The dislike of jenoun for strong tastes and smells seems to suggest a reason for the custom among the Shawia of suspending a packet of black pepper around a child's neck as a cure for whooping-cough, the habit of the Ouled Ziane women when recovering from child-birth of attaching a small packet containing charcoal, barley, and salt (to which, as we have seen, jenoun object) to their right ankles, and the cure for headaches used by the Ouled Ziane, which consists in placing a little pounded onion mixed with barley flour upon the head and attaching a red stone, known as "gettamara," to the head-dress.

We have seen that all red things are regarded as charms against the " evil eye," and it seems that they are useful as protection from other jenoun than those which accompany envious glances, for I saw a Shawi man in Wad el Abiod suffering from the effects of a severe blow over the right eye-brow who was wearing upon his right wrist, in addition to a small packet of salt, two necklets, one of European beads and coral and the other of coral and rectangular silver ornaments, such as are commonly worn by Shawia women. The Shawia find a further use for coral in medicine, for they are in the habit of suspending from the head-dress or the girdle a long pointed piece of coral to check a tendency to nose-bleeding in men and excessive menstru- ation in women. These pieces of coral, I was told, should not be pierced, but should be set in a metal socket for