Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/29

Rh for sheep or cattle after the crops are off. These properties cannot be alienated, except by some process of law. The land-measures remind one of our old English and Domesday basal measures of ploughlands. A fedān is what a pair of oxen can be supposed to plough in a day, i.e. 1,200 drah, a drah being nearly a square yard. A feddan is about 135 English acres, and is reckoned the equivalent of what a yoke of oxen can plough in a year. Boundaries, where they do not follow a stream, or are marked by well-known rocks or ancient trees, consist of irregular rows of larger stones gathered off the fields, with small piles at the angles. By far the larger proportion of lawsuits are with regard to the continual sly and gradual removal of the neighbours' landmarks. There is no beating of the village bounds, as far as I could ascertain, though government officers at periodical visits examine them, and hear local complaints upon the spot. Spring festivals, accompanied by eating, drinking, and dancing, are observed, at which Christian priests (or Moslem, just beyond the Protectorate) bless the young crops and the budding fruit-trees, and the former sprinkle them with holy water. The mulberry-trees, which are invaluable in the silk-producing country, are special objects of this superstition. Red ribbon, a bone, or half a cow's shoe, tied on a vine, preserves the grapes from evil influences. On the Epiphany, the fruit-trees are said to bow their heads in adoration of Christ, and then women hang a piece of dough (bread of life, and sacred, as we shall see by-and-by) wrapped in a cloth on the bough of a tree. Next morning the dough has "risen." They say, of course, this would not happen on any other day of the year. At the ingathering of crops of all kinds — corn, olive, figs, grapes, pine-seeds — enough must be let fall on the ground to give the poor a liberal gleaning. The tendency to partnership extends from the land to its produce. At the silkworm-feeding season, families will