Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/82

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THE POWERS OF EVIL IN JERUSALEM.

BY MRS. HANS H. SPOER (A. GOODRICH-FREER),
Author of Outer Isles, Inner Jerusalem, etc.

(Read at Meeting, 19th April, 1905.)

The following notes have been gradually collected during the year which has elapsed since the sending off of my last paper,[1] and I desire to express my grateful indebtedness to publications of Mrs. Einsler (wife of the well-known German specialist in Oriental diseases), of the brothers Baldensperger, and to Mr. and Mrs. Hanauer, not only for actual information, but for suggestions and interpretations which have facilitated my enquiries. Direct relations with many Moslems of all classes, consequent upon my interest in certain landed properties in Jerusalem, have also given me special opportunities for enquiry; and long journeys on horseback into the remoter parts of Palestine, Syria, and Moab, have facilitated observation. Jerusalem possesses learned and excellent libraries, but not of the English tongue; and in the absence of all English books of reference, and of means of taking counsel, I have perhaps fallen into the double error of relating what may be already well known among specialists, and of withholding details of interest, from fear of repeating the trivial and the familiar.


The folk-lore of the Bath and of water in general is practically endless. Water, as it is the wealth and the