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202 walk the mother puts him into a basket and begs for food which is supposed to strengthen him.

The hyaena is fond of water-melons; but he first taps them with his paws to see whether they are ripe or not.

If the children take after the mother, the father loves the mother; if they take after the father, it is the mother who loves the father.

In 1906 when my dahabia was leaving the village of Gharb Assuan, north of Assuan, with a Nubian captain and crew, the captain’s mother threw water with her hands several times over the side of the boat, saying each time: “Mâ Sâlama kullokum!” (“Good luck, all of you!”).

My Cairene servant, Mustafa Ali, told me that his father was once returning home after dark from his daughter’s house on the north side of Helwân to his own house on the south side of the village, when he found the lane blocked by a man who straddled across it from wall to wall. He drew out his knife and threatened to cut the man’s foot off if it were not withdrawn. Thereupon it was withdrawn, buy only for two foot-breadths; so he knew that the man was an afrît (spirit). But being an upright man he squeezed though between the foot an the wall without fear and therefore injury.

One of my sailors (Mohammed Radab from Gharb Assuan) lost the sight of his right eye about five years before he told me the story (in 1905) in the following way. He saw a large serpent and struck it with a mattock, cutting it in two. As he did so, the snake blew poison into his eye; for the next two or three days it wept continuously and then became blind.

Mr G, D. Hornblower has informed me that he found an acacia an a village near the Pyramids full of iron nails, and was told that they were driven into it in order to propitiate the sukkân es-sont, “the inhabitants of the acacia.” Also that an okht or “daughter” accompanies every person