Page 29 - Arabian Studies (I)

Folklore and Folk Literature in Oman and Socotra 15

W.P. For about ten days.
D. Is he still on the breast, or have you weaned him?
W.P. No, he’s still on the breast.
D. Might you be pregnant?
W.P. I think I might be.
D. Take care you wean the boy. If you feed him while you’re
pregnant, he will die. You haven’t got milk now, you have
bee-stings. If you take him off the breast he will get better.
One mtawwi‘ who had special gifts was able to cure mew te met (a
stroke?)1 7 by striking with a palm branch or a lung (b-drfet weld
be-rye’). On the occasion recorded this man hit ‘it’ six times a day
with a palm-branch saying:
I have struck you stroke
I have your secret
You are a man, and I am a man
You are a woman, and I am a woman
You are unclean, and I am unclean
You are clean, and I am clean.
d-ewtemk teX amewtemet
Xey bey]I ser
het gayg we-hoh gayg
we-het tet we-hoh tet
het engest we-hoh engdys
het tehayret we-hoh tehayr.

The patient was cured in a week.
In this case the doctor seems temporarily to assume the burden of
the sickness, in a manner not unlike certain stages in some kinds of
psychiatric treatment.
There are numerous folk remedies throughout the area which
depend on charms and amulets. In Socotra, for example, the
mountain people (di-fedlion) believe that a certain fly (the bott fly?)
which they call di-aser can lay its eggs in the comers of the eyes and
in the nasal passages. This causes intense irritation and can indeed
cause death. To protect themselves against this fly they wear bright,
speckled beads which are imported from Aden. They call them
hdniab, which seems however to be a general name for beads and not
a name specific to this kind of beads. 1 8
Shape-changing is a frequent theme in the folk literature of these
peoples and a not unusual feature of real life. I was told as a true
story by ‘All Musallam, who knew the people concerned, that a man
had made a nuisance of himself bewailing over the grave of his