Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/487

Rh in poor households, depending upon the religion of the Jinn.

In the case of a Jinn of Jewish faith a red victim is sacrificed at sunset on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath: for a Moslem Jinn a white goat or fowl is slain at sunset on the Mohammedan Sabbath (Friday): while, should the Jinn be declared to be a Christian, a black victim is slaughtered at sunset on a Sunday. The victim must be of the sex opposite to that of the patient from whom its sacrifice is to remove the Jinn, and it is of importance that his colour should be without blemish. For a goat of absolutely uniform colour, therefore, people will pay a ridiculously high price when they require it for sacrificial purposes. From the goat or fowl a tasty dish is prepared of stewed flesh and semolina to which some natives state that nuts or fruit should be added, and this dish is left alone in a room for a short time before the patient and his family partake of it, maintaining the strictest silence as they eat. A portion of the dish, together with the blood of the victim, some of its bones and, in the case of a fowl, its feathers are placed in an earthen bowl and conveyed outside the village by a member of the family who must on no account speak or look behind him until he has regained the house after depositing the bowl, which with its contents is termed neshura, at some point usually just outside the village itself. Should he speak or look back, a Jinn will cause an accident to befall him. It appears that the neshura is usually so placed before the family consumes the meal. Some people say that only the bones, blood, and feathers of the victim should be placed in the bowl, but in the very numerous neshuras which I have observed I usually found traces of some of the meal as well.

Different natives with whom I have discussed the question appear to hold different opinions as to how this placing of a neshura outside the village causes the Jinn to leave the