Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/494

 1 86 Folklore of the Algerian Hills and Desert.

the dish, his garments tied up, and was held in position by a man squatting on his right, the latter supporting the child's body with his left hand and holding its legs extended with his right. The foreskin having been drawn over a small knobbed stick, to which it was secured with string, and the glans protected by means of a loop of wool, the foreskin was severed at one cut with a sharp knife, a gun being fired outside the house the moment the cut had been made in order, as the natives said, to scare away Jenun. One of the fresh eggs upon the fragment of pottery was immediately broken open at one end and applied to the part, so that the penis was enclosed in it ; after the removal of the egg, powdered juniper leaves were liberally be- sprinkled upon the penis, the abdomen, and the thighs, upon which melted butter was next poured. The sprink- ling of juniper leaves was then repeated and considerable quantities of powdered goat's dung subsequently applied, after which more melted butter was poured on and covered with a final sprinkling of juniper. The child was then wrapped in its garments, and the man who had held it in position took some of the coarse salt in his right hand and made two series of seven rotary motions with it over the child's body — one series from right to left, the other from left to right — finally throwing some of the salt over the infant's head.

The ceremony of the first circumcision was then at an end. The second one exactly resembled it, save that the gun, an antiquated muzzle-loading weapon, could not be induced to go off for some moments after the cut had been made, a circumstance which caused considerable annoy- ance, probably owing to fear that a Jinn might have time to possess the child between the severing of the foreskin and the delayed discharge of the gun. The second infant was rather younger than the first. While the operations were being performed the women of the party kept up their chanting and dancing to the sound of the drum on