Page 37 - Arabian Studies (I)

Folklore and Folk Literature in Oman and Socotra 23

13. Ar. tablb. The S word is probably related to the root k(h)l ‘to be able’.
14. Allowing the blood of a slaughtered animal to run directly from its
throat on to the head and shoulders of the sick person docs not seem to be
practiced in Arabia outside Dhofar. This is mentioned by Thomas in his article
‘Anthropological observations. .’,88.
15. Cf. also below on the word meshayr.
16. That is to say they were given as representative by a native speaker, not
remembered by me.
17. This seems to be associated with partial paralysis of the face. The MH.
root Itm means ‘to strike’ and the beginning of the incantational formula
sustains this metaphor.
18. Cf. MH. henzebot, pi. henzab, S. hanzot, pi. hanzeb ‘bead’. This word is
mistranslated in Muller, Die Mehri- und Soqotri-Sprache II. Soqotri-Texte,
Siidarabische Expedition VI, Vienna 1905 (SAE VI), 44, line 3. See also Leslau,
Lexique Soqotri, Paris 1938, s.v.
19. In this ‘to eat’ means ‘to cause the death of someone’.
20. The snake may be presumed to be her external soul.
21. The root klb may however occur in the S. word kabeh ‘transferring a
person from one place to another (by magic)’.
22. On the hyama as a mount of witches in ancient Yemen, sec Nicholson,
Literary History of the Arabs, Cambridge 1953,20. In Ethiopia there are
shape-shifters who assume the form of hyaenas at night and have the evil eye by
day (Amh., Tigre, Tigrinya buda). Hodson and Walker, Grammar of the Galla or
Oromo Language, London 1922, give the best description (in a note on boda,
p. 150).
23. Cf. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, (repr.) NY 1956, 179.
24. This gives a inter alia a description of what the word ‘eat’ means in this
context.
25. The speaker pointed to his side.
26. See SAEW, 69 (line 5).
27. The original root must be presumed to be shr. In its present transmuted
form the word might be taken to mean ‘flower-person’ or some such expression,
though the common word for flower is safrir.
28. The night precedes the day, as in Arabic.
29. Cf. above on these healers and soothsayers.
30. This is the general term. The root *rr means ‘to send’.
31. Thomas in his ‘Anthropological observations...’, 89, gives further
information.
32. See Thomas, art. cit., 89.
33. Thus for example trial by ordeal in which a red-hot sword is put on the
tongue of the accused is no longer practised by the Harasls, but it occurs in their
stories. The word is in MH. mhemeret S. mart. In S. ‘being tried &c.’ is semertot.
All these peoples believe it is effective.
34. Cf. Johnstone, art. cit., above.
35. In our own country, where poetry has no part in everyday life, the public
is still dedicated to what E. Sitwell has called the ‘sub-Wordsworthian ideals’ of
Georgian poetry.