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 them on the camels and went and threw them into the Nile. After he had thrown them he took the camels and went and carried away the treasure from the cave.”

It will be observed that the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves has been tacked on to the story of the two brothers. Or does the version recounted to me represent an earlier form of that in the Arabian Nights? Unfortunately the narrator forgot the crucial point of the story, where the brigand chief would have first promised to bring some more “first-class” oil to the merchant and then have told his companions to provide forty ballasis or jars—so called from their being made at Ballas—inside which they were to be concealed.

The Cairenes say: Children say on a festival: Said of the shîḥ or “wormwood” (Artemisia maritima) which is used for putting into clothes and rugs in order to keep insects away: The shîḥ is believed in Upper Egypt to keep serpents out of a house.