Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/482

 174 Folklore of the Algerian Hills and Desert.

was left, wiling away the time by playing to himself upon the end-flute of reed. A passing Jinn, in the guise of a woman, growing weary of his music, fell upon him and slew him by cutting his throat. If it is dangerous to disturb the habitat of usually quiescent Jenun, to irritate them, or to slay their animals, it is doubly so to attack or interfere with them should they make themselves visible to mortal eyes. One night an Arab saw a woman, gorgeously apparelled and wearing golden ornaments, walking alone in a date grove. Thinking that he had chanced upon a splendid opportunity of robbing a defenceless female, he attempted to seize her. She thereupon fled, and the Arab, failing to realize that he was dealing with a Jinn, gave chase through the gardens until the female form fled under a little aqueduct of palm stem too low to admit of her pursuer's passage, with the result that the latter struck the palm stem so hard with his forehead as he ran that he was laid up for a considerable period. Another native of the same place, El Kantara, finding a fine he-goat in his garden took it home to the courtyard of his house. His wife instinctively took a dislike to the animal, pronouncing it to be a Jinn. In this she was correct, for the creature grew to a prodigious size and finally attacked her before it was driven from the house.

It is believed that Jenun are subject to death, but the mortal who slays one must himself expect to perish in a few days or, at least, to be ill for many months. It appears ■ that a Jinn, when shot, utters a remarkably loud shriek, and that, no matter in what shape it may have revealed itself when shot at, its corpse will resemble that of a frog.

The injury which Jenun cause to the health of mortals is of so varied a character as to embrace practically every -accident and illness which flesh is heir to, and, as I have noted in my former paper,^ armies of these demons are

^ Hilton-Simpson, " Some Algerian Superstitions," Folk-Lore, vol. -xxvi. p. 245.