Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/177

Rh embracing one another, one of another family, not belonging to the dead, invites the people to his house, and a supper is given, meat and rice or bread in the meat-broth. Coffee follows, and, in fact, the party differs in nothing from any other. Conversation on every topic is carried on, and it is meant to put the relatives to other thoughts. The Kawad (see Quarterly Statement, 1893, p. 320), is brought in the following days, or after months or years, by such as are far away.

Question 27. When a man is murdered, is a pile of stones raised on the spot?

Answer. Yes. A pile of stones always marks the spot where a person was killed. This is done especially to keep the Mared, away, who appears for a year to come on the spot. Some Mareds continue for any length of time. In a cave near Artas, and by the wayside, many credulous persons pretend to have heard occasionally the sighing of a person killed there more than fifty years ago. The spot where another man was killed near Bethlehem was marked by a cross by the Christians of Bethlehem; this keeps away ghosts. Again the Jew and Moslem killed on the Jaffa road in 1880, close to the Imam 'All in Wad Ali, had the place marked with stones almost in the carriage-road. As, when they were murdered, each one tried to escape, so the spots were right and left of the road. The piles lay there for many years, and finally had to be put away in repairing the road. In out-of-the-way places such piles are raised, and remain, and are forgotten. When the last execution took place in Jerusalem, January 1st, 1869, near the Jaffa gate, the spot was marked with stones, but the pile having to be taken away, the ghost appeared until the Mukaris and others frequenting the locality made it a place for tethering the animals hy driving in large wooden stakes or pegs.

Question 28. Is there any difference between the burial of a man and of a woman? Do women follow a woman's coffin, and men follow a man's?  Does the wife go to the funeral of the husband?

Answer, None whatever. Once in the shroud the corpse is pure, and women are not, whilst living, so the latter is always carried and followed by men. Women follow behind by threes and fours, holding each other by the hands and arms, singing and wailing, and uttering shrieks, The wife goes also to the funeral of her husband. A woman in child-bed must get up and go out of the house when a corpse is carried past, no matter at what distance, if it is seen, or death may ensue both to mother and child.

Question 29. ''Does the family continue to visit a grave every week or month, or year, and why do they do so? Do they put flowers or other objects on the tomb?''

Answer. As a rule the tombs are visited the day after the burial and for seven following days, and on the next Thursday, then every Thursday