Page:Folk-lore of the Holy Land.djvu/14

xii personality of Alexander the Great (Iskender Dhu el Karneyn) is stretched so as to include more ancient conquerors. Moreover, the desire inherent in Orientals to know how everything came to be, content with any hypothesis provided it be witty, has produced any number of delicious little fictions which, to all ends but the scientific, are much better than fact. Such jeux d’esprit abound in the following pages, as, for instance, the story of Noah’s daughter (sect. i. chap. i.), and of how the mosquito came to buzz (sect. iii. chap. x.); and they are useful to be known by all who must converse with Orientals, since for the latter they are a part of learning. Mr Kipling’s “Just So Stories”? are examples of this vein of Eastern humour.

Of Our Lord and the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin there are sheaves of legends extant, many of them current among Moslems as well as Christians; for it must not be forgotten that the followers of Muhammad have great reverence for Jesus Christ, whom their Prophet named Ruh’ Allah, the Spirit of God. They believe in His Immaculate Conception and all His miracles, but deny His Divinity. Only St Paul is anathema to them, because they say he took the pure faith of El Islam, the faith of Adam and Noah and Abraham, as restored by Jesus, and made of it a new religion. With the very doubtful exception of the quaint story of Francesco and the Angel of Death (sect. ii. chap. v.), no legend