Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/499

Rh with whom I have discussed the question have never told me in so many words that this is the reason underlying the use of eggs, but they state that the bride breaks an egg on the door lintel of her new home in order that she may long remain in that home, and it is hard to imagine how a sterile wife could hope to remain for any length of time in the home of a Shawiya husband. There are two points of resemblance between the wedding ceremonies of the Aures and those which take place at the commencement of ploughing, upon which latter I have published a few notes elsewhere. When the sacks of seed have been placed upon a mule for transport to the field, a small boy is made to ride upon them, and both at weddings and on the first day of ploughing a dish is prepared of semolina, butter, honey, and sugar, known to the Shawiya as ademine, which is offered to the guests at a marriage and to all and sundry who may be passing the field at the moment when ploughing is commenced. I have not yet learned from the natives themselves their reason for these customs, which appear to be universally observed in the Aures.

Other occasions on which human beings seem especially susceptible to possession by spirits, usually harmless if exorcised in time, are the periodical fetes held in honour of the memory of some long since departed Marabout or Moslem saint. On such occasions persons of either sex, upon hearing the sound of the drums and hautboys which accompany the ceremony, work themselves up into a state of religious ecstasy. They become temporarily so demented as to lick hot iron, cut and stab themselves with knives, shriek, dance, prophesy, and disclose the deepest secrets of their neighbours, secrets which, it is believed, could only have been made known to them by some supernatural agency. This violent hysteria is usually followed by a collapse. The patient falls into a state of coma from which he or she can only be aroused by a recitation of