Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/508

198 spectable of the Shawiya, deeds such as these of the sorceresses are regarded with pious horror, and a woman caught in the act of performing them would run a considerable risk of being killed on the spot. The subject, therefore, is a difficult one on which to obtain precise information, and it is, perhaps, unnecessary to add that the natives themselves know nothing whatever of the origin of a custom which seems to find a counterpart in the drinking, for medicinal purposes, by the Mohammedans of Oude of water in which the moon has been reflected. From the few disconnected scraps of evidence set forth above it would appear that, beneath the modern cloak of Islam and underlying the earlier chaotic demonology which pervades both the Aures and the desert to this day, there are to be found traces of an ancient cult the very existence of which is unsuspected by the natives who perform the last remnants of its rites. I am certain that careful enquiries in the field will reveal more such traces. But, if they are to be sought at all, the search for these traces must be undertaken at once. The forbidding frontiers of the Aures will at no far distant date be penetrated by roads; work upon them has, indeed, been commenced. The stream of tourist traffic which the splendid scenery of the hills cannot fail to attract to these roads will surely have its effect in the introduction of modern ideas among the hitherto conservative Shawiya. In fact, the modernization of Berber life in the fastnesses of the Aures has already made more strides in the last three years than in any previous epoch.

This is due to the return from active service of numerous Shawiya who, had they not rallied round the standard of France in the Great War, would probably never have left their mountain homes at all.

As it is, they have come back to these homes, with widened outlook but with shaken faith, to sow the seeds of change in the customs of their neighbours; they have returned, worthier subjects of a Great European Power,