Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/489

 Folklore of the Algerian Hills and Desert. i8i

difference in the beliefs of the two races, Berber and Arab, with regard to this method of freeing a patient from possession by a Jinn.

A curious means of healing a stye in the eye, which was described to me by an Arab of an oasis who practises the mediaeval Arabian medicine still persisting in and around the Aures, bears some superficial resemblance to the neshura, and may be intended to exorcise a demon who is troubling the patient, though I have no direct evidence that this is the case. The patient takes seven — a magical number — grains of barley in his hand and passes them with a rotary movement around the eye seven times, counting aloud. This done he takes some fragments of a broken pot to a point beside a path where he places a fragment of pottery on the ground and lays one of the grains of barley and a little salt upon it. He then places another potsherd on the grain and the salt and lays a second grain and some more salt upon it, continuing to erect a little pile of potsherds, barley, and salt until he has thus placed all his seven grains of barley in position. Any passer-by who recognises the little pile will upset it by throwing a stone at it, when the stye in the patient's eye will heal ; the patient himself, however, must not so upset the pile.

A cure is effected should the pile be overturned by a wayfarer accidentally treading upon it, though I was not informed that possession by a Jinn or any other evil would befall the person who thus upset it. Sacrifices are made presumably to Jenun upon other occasions than the illness of a human being from whom a demon must be induced to depart. For example, when a new house is in course of construction, an animal must be slaughtered and eaten, and its blood smeared upon the lintel of the door when this is placed in position. The animal may be a cow, a sheep, or a goat, but an animal's blood must be smeared on the lintel and not the blood of a bird. People in very