Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/108

86 all its variants, except the Russian tale of Wassilissa-Tzaryevna, who, being transformed into a frog, could hardly be found far away from water. A man who saw a girl naked must marry her in order to rehabilitate her honour. I have a fine tale in the Anatolian Turkish dialect, but it is too gross, as indeed most of the Oriental tales are, to be given here, I hope, however, to edit the Anatolian text of it ere long. In this tale a strong support for the above expressed opinion is found. In the well-known Greek legend, a hunter who saw Diana naked was killed, for by the fact of his seeing her thus he offended her. In the East, no one but a near relative or husband can see a woman's face, although this custom is not strictly adhered to in small villages with purely Moslem population. There is, however, no greater offence to a woman than to tear away her veil in a public place. Can the Slavonic custom have originated from the indecency of seeing a woman unclothed without being her husband, or simply from the ease of stealing a girl at the water (river, lake, or sea) without leaving any traces?

St. John's College, Oxford.

About fifteen years ago I was in Egypt, and one day when on the Nile, an officer of the Khedive's household named Sámi Bey, pointed out to me a group of peasant women kneeling as if in silent prayer at the base of the wall of an old temple.

"You can have no idea of what they are doing," he remarked. "Well, they are in a certain way worshipping the deities of ancient Egypt, or rather Isis. Observe that all are scratching the stone with knives or pebbles. When a woman wishes to become a mother, she goes to some ancient building or monument, wall or pillar, and scratches on it a deep groove. Then, as she believes, her desire will be granted."

I examined the marks thus made, and subsequently found them by thousands on many ancient ruins. Many appeared to be coeval with the buildings themselves. They were peculiar or un-