In some natural horror, his Rabbi rebuked him, making him recite the Sixth Commandment and other appropriate passages of scripture. He certainly promised to respect Western prejudices in the matter, and kept his word loyally; but incidentally showed that quotation is a game at which two can play. “What you say is true no doubt Rabbi. But yet you know that these Papists are after all little better than idolaters; and it is written that the good King Josiah did bid his people burn the idolaters’ bones!”
A case that is perhaps even stranger was the sad lot of a Jewish village, which was situate, for its sins, in the land of Berwar, just within comfortable raiding distance of Tyari territory. Jewish villages are rare in the land, but there are a few; mostly claiming descent from the “ten tribes” which were settled here by Sargon.
If the descent so claimed be correct, the lot of these poor Hebrews was doubly hard; for they were raided on three successive Good Fridays by the Tyari men, not because of any feud, but purely out of respect for the day! Something had to be done, in the raiders’ opinion, to show their abhorrence of an act about which they had much the same feelings as King Clovis; and much the same uncertainty as to dates.
The episode was mediæval, but the people are mediæval; and even more civilized people sometimes use the Jews equally ill. The Tyari men must have sung with right good will in those years, the anthem of their Easter vigil service: “Woe to the people of the Jews!”
That strange observances, beliefs, and superstitions should linger in this corner of Asia, even to a greater extent than in other parts, is natural enough. Second sight,[{305}] however (to take one widespread phenomenon), does not seem to be so common a faculty here as is the case in Scotland; or it may be simply that the Oriental is more chary of speaking of such a matter to a foreigner. Still, we have heard of cases; notably that of a Seer whom his fellow tribesmen consulted on all matters of importance, and who foretold at the last the disaster that would befall them in one special raid. “If you go out to battle now;” he said, “you will flee seven ways before the Mussulmans; and though you yourself, chief, will be saved by a willow tree, death will be my portion.” The prophecy was literally fulfilled; the Christians being routed in the skirmish, and scattered. The Seer himself (whom the Kurds had intended to spare) was killed by a random shot; and the chief took to flight, and being pursued, had to save himself by swimming the Zab. He was, however, swept away by the current and only escaped by clinging to a projecting branch of willow.
