Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/492

 184 Folklore of the Algerian Hills and Desert.

informant could give me no reason underlying these prac- tices ; but it may be that the effigy and the egg are believed in some way to indicate the child's fate, while the barley may be sown rather as a magical cure for the malady resulting from the unfortunate day of its birth than as a part of the method of divination.

On certain occasions mortals are especially liable to possession by Jenun, and magical precautions are accord- ingly taken to prevent it. One of these occasions is a boy's circumcision, at which time the Shawiya believe that a Jinn will make an attack upon him. Although the magical rites at a circumcision are by no means elaborate, I have thought it advisable to describe the whole ceremony as I saw it, for I have not yet found in the literature of the Barbary States any detailed account of a circumcision among either the Berbers or the Arabic-speaking people of the plains. In 1920 we were invited to attend the circum- cision of two boys in a very small Shawiya hamlet at a short distance from the larger village of Beni Ferra in which we were staying. The household was an average one, neither wealthy nor very poor. When we arrived at about 8 a.m. a number of guests were present, among them many women attired in their best and wearing all their silver ornaments. One of these was a professional danseuse from the Ulad Abdi tribe, who had come to Beni Ferra to dance at several weddings which were taking place at the time. Before the man arrived who was to perform the operations, the women danced in the house to the strains of a single-membrane drum played by a man. At first two women, holding each other by one hand, danced opposite to three others (one of whom was the professional) also with joined hands, the two groups advancing to meet each other and retiring again backwards, as they moved their abdominal muscles in the usual Algerian danse du ventre. As they danced they continually chanted in the Shawiya, Berber, dialect : " God let his father live until