In order to keep the bad ginns at a distance, certain precautions may be taken. Salt and steel are antidotes. Salt in the hand when going out at night, salt in the pillow when sleeping, are measures which should be used. In building a house some people put salt and wheat and an egg into the ground, and kill a goat on the threshold. On sinking a well (the stronghold of ginns) a goat or sheep must always be killed.
The best talisman against ginns is the repetition of certain passages in the Korān: when passing a dark spot, say the "Ajatu-l-kursi": as for neglecting to say "B`ism Allah" (In the name of God) before going for a ride, or before doing any sort or kind of action, why, that is to have a ginn as your companion on your horse, and at your elbow, whatever you may be doing. As every place has its "owners," its good or bad ginns, on striking a light and going into a room Moors say, "Good-evening to you, O ye owners of the place." And if a tent is to be pitched, first of all the protection of good ginns must be solicited in that spot.
Supposing a ginn gets hold of a man, and he is ill, there are certain doctors, magicians, among the Moors who can cast the ginn out. They practice a regular "ginn-cult," and celebrate annual feasts, going outside Tetuan to a certain spring near the Moorish cemetery, and killing a bullock, a black goat, a black donkey, and some chickens.
The word ginn originally meant "the secret," "the mysterious," "the hidden"; and the belief in ginns is part of the actual creed of Mohammedans, Arabs, and Berbers alike. But Moors have a hundred superstitions. They believe that all animals had a language once upon a time,—that the horse prays to Allah when he stretches out his leg; that the donkey which falls down, asks Allah that the same may happen to his master. They say that the donkey was once a man whom Allah changed into his present shape because he washed himself with milk; that the stork was a kadi, or judge, who was made a stork because he passed unjust sentences upon his fellow-men. It is therefore a sin to kill a stork, or a crow, or a toad, or a white spider, or a white chicken. A white spider once spun its web over a cave where Mohammed hid: his enemies saw it, thought therefore that no one could have recently entered the cave, and passed on.
It is hardly necessary to say, that about Death—the Great Secret—there are numerous superstitions. There were too many funerals in Tetuan: early in the afternoon one was often encountered at the Gate of the Tombs; death would only have taken place that morning, without much inquiry as to its cause, and whether by fair means or foul nobody knew and few cared. The procession came swinging along, stately men in flowing garments, white and dark, chanting the weird funeral hymn or "lament"—always the same mournful, monotonous cadence, rising and falling in the narrow streets, and at last out into the air. And then once through the Báb-el-M`kabar, the great company in white turn into the Moorish burial-ground, and arrange themselves in a long line against the hillside, and the chant becomes general, almost a great cry, full of the strange fascination of certain Eastern music, withal so unintelligible to Europeans.
The body, loosely wrapped in white, lies on an open bier. After a sort of service on that rough hillside against the walls of the city, the procession winds on again to the shallow grave: a last chant, and the body goes into the earth, and is quickly covered. A scribe, or reader, is left behind when every one has gone: he reads pieces out of the Korān over the grave, and chants. Friends, mourners perhaps, will come out on other days, and sit round the tomb, reading the Korān together, and singing the weird, sad melodies. You may see them. But I have never seen a Moor give way to the slightest outward expression of grief.
Mohammedans firmly believe, of course, in a Paradise to which the good are admitted: their conception as to this land of the hereafter, largely consisting of gardens and shade, adds a bridge, by which means alone access to Paradise is gained. The bridge (Al Sirat) is finer than a hair and sharper than a sword: the wicked invariably turn giddy and fall off into the pit of Hell, while the righteous negotiate it in safety.
A rich man, when he is buried, is provided with a vault. The body is laid on its right side, its sightless eyes turned to Mecca. During the first night, Mohammedans hold that the soul remains in the body for the purpose of being interrogated by two angels before it can be admitted into Paradise. They appear, and the body is roused to a sitting posture and to temporary life. It replies to the dread examination. If this ends unsatisfactorily, the angels torture and beat the body, until the sepulchre closes in upon it. But if they approve the soul's replies, they bid the man sleep on in peace in the protection of God.
Travellers complain of a want of "pageant" in Morocco. Ostentatious funerals and processions of all sorts, public demonstrations over trifles, the worship of gilt and glitter, and the emotional spirit called loyalty, of the present day, do not exist in El Moghreb. There is a spirit of simplicity about its shows; they do not breathe of money: old as their customs are, there is vigour in them and a certain amount of use, for the people have not outgrown them, do not make of them so many lay figures on which to display signs of their own great wealth.
The Day of the Great Feast up at Court with the Sultan, that is the pageant in all Morocco. We missed it.