This head-dress is bound into the hair by strings and is worn night and day.

In the division of household labor the man goes to the market, field or on the road with the animals, leaving almost all the work about the house to be done by women and children. Indeed, these may often be called upon to assist in carrying to or from the market, in watching on the threshing-floor or in the vineyard and orchard, in helping harvest the crops or in gleaning, sifting and cleaning grain. Children sometimes carry food to the workers who are at a distance. The man may make repairs about his house, if skilful enough to do so. He drives the bargains and settles business matters. Upon the woman falls most of the work of the household. It is often hard and long because of primitive methods and scanty means.[[97]] The older girls may help considerably, especially by taking much of the care of the children. The woman’s day begins early with the grinding of flour for bread.[[98]] She probably cleaned the wheat on the previous afternoon while there was light. Grinding can be done in the early morning before daylight. The woman sweeps and cleans and cooks food for the family. She makes long trips into the uncultivated country about the village to bring home head-loads of brush, thorns or grass. She must make daily trips at least, and sometimes several a day, to the spring, or possibly to a cistern, for the water supply. She often keeps chickens. Gardening is the man’s work, though the woman must often help in the little plot if there be one. Now and then a woman may find time to attend to her personal appearance. If her dress of linen crash be soiled she may take it with other washing to the spring or cistern. She first soaks her clothes and then laying them on a rock pounds out the dirt with a short club. If the silk embroidery on the dress makes it unadvisable to wet the cloth, she rubs off the dirt with bread-crumbs. She occasionally gets an opportunity to take off her head-dress of coins, clean the coins and comb out and wash her hair, or she may do the similar service of washing and head-cleaning for her children.

The peasant women are sometimes skilful in embroidering in silk, with a cross-stitch, on linen and on cotton. They make a good deal of basketwork from wheat straw, which they dye a brilliant blue, green, red, purple and brown. Cooking dishes, platters, bowls and jars are made of clay by the women. The women of any village keep to the making of such vessels and shapes as they have learned best. The Râm Allâh women make a reddish jar of huge size ornamented with a brown painted band of a basketwork pattern. This jar is known colloquially as jarreh. The smaller size goes by the same name or else by the term hisheh. Hish is a kind of red stone that is pulverized to make jar material. The long jar that is used for carrying water from the spring to the house is called zarawîyeh. The zarawîyeh zerḳa is a product of Gaza, and the zarawîyeh bayḍeh of Ramleh and Ludd. Another large variety of jar is called zîr. Any tiny jar used as a drinking vessel or for cooling drinking water may be called sherbeh. The little milk jars with a very wide mouth are called kûz or, by the fellaḥîn, chûz.

The peasant, when well fed, clothed and sheltered, is a fine specimen of physical humanity. When ill he is miserable indeed, and greatly to be pitied. Hospitals and other European helps are assisting of late where but a short time ago there was nothing but native ingenuity. Even now the very poor can hardly be said to be supplied with adequate assistance. In the more backward villages, farther from centers where physicians and dispensaries are available, the most curious shifts are made to drive off disease and win health. Among Moslems and Christians similar means are taken. Mothers pray at shrines and sacred trees, tying up bits of rag to keep the prayers in the minds of the saints who have been invoked. It takes kindliness and patience to win over the poorest and most suspicious of the sick peasantry. And it will take more than that to secure suitable nursing for invalids.

One child of Christian parents wore a bone from a wolf’s snout about the neck as a charm. It was the gift of the paternal grandmother. A wolf’s jaw-bone is a potent charm. A Moslem said that the wolf was a friend of his family and that if one killed a wolf with a knife and then wrapped the knife in a handkerchief or other cloth it would prove efficacious in time of sickness. For instance, if a child were ill with a cough it was only necessary to draw the back of the knife-blade across the throat in imitation of cutting and say, “Allâh and the wolf,” “Allâh and the wolf,” then make a noise like the growl of a wolf and the child would be well. The many superstitious remains of primitive religious notions are usually preserved among the women of the land.

Slips of paper, with verses from the Ḳurân written on them, are soaked in water and the drink administered to patients by the very ignorant. Burning and bleeding are frequently resorted to. More nauseating practises are the utilization for medicinal purposes of the froth that forms at the mouth of a maniac, or of a derwîsh (dervish) who, in the excitement of his exercises, has fallen down insensible. It is considered proper for the friends of the sick to call, and sometimes the room where the patient is lying is full of talking neighbors.[[99]] Fortunate is it if some of them be not smoking as well as making a noise. Figs are used as drawing plasters.[[100]] For soreness of the gums or teeth a dry fig is heated and laid on the spot. A relic of the days of quacks is found in the proverb, “Ask one who will try and not a doctor.” Doubtless the next proverb in order would be the one running, “Patience is the key of relief.” Of palsy the peasants say, “Palsy, then don’t doctor it.”

IN A DOORYARD. WOMEN CLEANING WHEAT