Note 8 — VIII.—WITCHCRAFT AND DEMONOLOGY.

Do you remember the German story of the lad who travelled “um das gruseln zu lernen” (to learn how to tremble)? Well, I, who never gruselte (quaked) before, had a touch of it a few evenings ago. I was sitting here quietly drinking tea and four or five men were present, when a cat came to the door. I called “bis, bis,” and offered milk, but puss, after looking at us, ran away. “Well dost thou, lady,” said a quiet sensible man, a merchant here, “to be kind to the cat, for I dare say he gets little enough at home; his father, poor man, cannot cook for his children every day.” And then, in an explanatory tone to the company, “That is Alee Nasseeree’s boy Yussuf—it must be Yussuf, because his fellow twin Ismaeen is with his mule at Negadeh.” Mir gruselte (I shivered), I confess; not but what I have heard things almost as absurd from gentlemen and ladies in Europe; but an “extravagance” in a kuftan has quite a different effect from one in a tail-coat. “What! my butcher’s boy who brings the meat—a cat!” I gasped. “To be sure, and he knows well where to look for a bit of good cookery, you see. All twins go out as cats at night, if they go to sleep hungry; and their own bodies lie at home like dead meanwhile, but no one must touch them, or they would die. When they grow up to ten or twelve they leave it off. Why, your own boy Achmet does it. Oh, Achmet!” Achmet appears. “Boy, don’t you go out as a cat at night?” “No,” said Achmet, tranquilly, “I am not a twin—my sister’s sons do.” I inquired if people were not afraid of such cats. “No, there is no fear, they only eat a little of the cookery; but if you beat them they will tell their parents, next day, ‘So and so beat me in his house last night,’ and show their bruises. No, they are not Afreets; they are beni Adam; only twins do it, and if you give them a sort of onion broth and camel’s milk the first thing when they are born, they don’t do it at all.” Omar professed never to have heard it, but I am sure he had, only he dreads being laughed at. One of the American missionaries told me something like it, as belonging to the Copts, but it is entirely Egyptian, and common to both religions. I asked several Copts, who assured me it was true, and told it just the same. Is it a remnant of the doctrine of transmigration? However, the notion fully accounts for the horror the people feel at the idea of killing a cat.—Lady Duff Gordon’s Last Letters. ↑