In the Tail of the Peacock

by Isabel Savory

The saint-house, of course, was forbidden ground: we went as close as common sense permitted, and from under the shady olives looked back at Tetuan down below us, a snow-white streak in the valley.

Some rags were hanging upon a bush near us. It is an interesting and curious practice, that of hanging votive rags upon the bushes around chapels and holy shrines: no less venerable is the performance of pilgrimages to the same. Both practices go back into the dim ages. They are in use to this day amongst the Shintoists of Japan, and the inhabitants of Northern Asia, India, the Orkneys, and remote corners of Ireland, where sickly children are dipped in streams, or passed through holes in stones or trees so many times running, going against the way of the sun, in order to produce the effect of making the sick child as strong as a lion. Then an offering must be made to the saint, and a rag is torn off somebody's garment, and tied to a bush near his grave, to show that they would have done more for the good saint if they had had the power.

Rag-trees, burdened with the tattered offerings of the devout and impecunious tribes-people, flourish throughout Morocco,—signs hanging out, and blown by the wind, in the face of travellers; warnings of the deep-rooted superstition entangled in the innermost heart-cells of its people, to be disturbed at imminent peril.

Leaving the saint-house and village, we struck a path upwards into a wild gorge, at the bottom of which a brawling torrent was tumbling. It turned many rude mills, and there were lush fields of corn on its banks. Far away in the grey distance now, to the north, we could see a dark wedge of rock, almost on the sky-line beyond the Anjera and other hills of Morocco: the Rock—Gibraltar.

At this point we lunched. Mohammed was provided, and dropped behind a rock: the donkey grazed. A little boy, minding goats, came up with a fascinating pocket-knife, but would not let it go out of his hand. A clear stream gave us drink—it was warm; bees hummed in the balmy air; there was an aromatic scent; clouds hung round the hills; the panorama below was essentially peaceful and "Christian."

And then we went on in search of the far-famed Blue Pool. But though we reached where the river lay in still pools, blue beyond all known blues, we found no more—only traces of a great flood and landslips, which, I suspect, had washed away the lake people had talked of. We found enough to bring us back on other days, and to understand why the missionaries take up their tents and camp in the mountains in the summer.

We returned by a path farther west, and passed a great olive wood full of black shadows. The scrub on the hillsides holds pig—there are plenty of them; and the boars become more or less antagonistic at certain times in the year. We were told tales of people who had met with terrifying adventures, but personally our expeditions had no such thrilling incidents connected with them.

It would have been unwise to stay out after sunset, and that time always saw us back at Jinan Dolero. It is said to be the most unsafe hour; for men are coming into Tetuan, and if they can waylay and rob or murder a traveller, and make their way into the city before the gates shut, half an hour after sunset, and sleep there, who shall suspect them of dark deeds done outside in the evening? Besides, Mohammed would never have consented to be out late, on account of the firm belief which Moors have in evil spirits. There is a special race of beings, they hold, in many respects like men, in others like spirits, called ginns. Their principal abode is the under-world, but they come up on to the earth, and are fond of lurking in wells and in dark corners, even in houses. Rooms are often haunted by ginns: men are surrounded by ginns. Some of the more enlightened Moors are inclined to represent ginns as merely superstitious imaginations and hallucinations on the part of the ignorant; but probably in his heart of hearts, no Moor but has a secret desire to propitiate ginns, and a secret dread of falling in with them.

Ginns eat and drink and propagate their species, and even form sexual connections with men. A man whose wife is any way odd or mysterious has married of course a ginn. Ginns are fond of inhabiting rivers, woods, the sea, ruins, springs, drains, and caves; they come out at night more than by day, and in certain streets no Moor will walk at night. Nor will a Moor sleep alone in a room. Ginns, when they appear, take the forms of men, goats, cats, dogs, almost any animal in fact, and also monsters.

Whirlwinds, and shooting stars, and dear times, and famine, and epidemics, are all caused by ginns. It is the ginns who have eaten all the food in the city when prices are exorbitant. If a man falls down in the dark, it is a ginn: a sudden illness or an accident is the work of a ginn. There are good ginns, but bad ginns are more common. The worst of them all is Iblis (the devil). Iblis tempts men to wickedness. All iniquity is the fault of Iblis.