Kabyle and Jewish Folktales: A Parallel

Author(s): Joseph Gompers

Source: Folklore, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jun. 30, 1926), p. 196
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1255694 .
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 196 Correspondence.

My informant held vaguely that her spell is of Turkish origin.

She is correct. The first word in the jingle is the Turkish oath
V' Allahi (" By God "), and the others merely ring the changes
on it in a suitably mystic and foolish manner.
It is remarkable that the tradition of the origin of the spell
should linger still in Zea, for it is a hundred years since the Turks
left the island. The use by Greeks of Turkish religious expres-
sions in a spell is also remarkable. No doubt it is due to the
psychology which finds other people's gods more powerful than
its own,-perhaps because they are invested with the terrors of
the unknown. MARGARET HASLUCK.

KABYLE AND JEWISH FOLKTALES: A PARALLEL.

LEO FROBENIUS, in his Volksmiirchender Kabylen, vol. i. page
256, tells a tale of " The Clever Woman," who had solved several
problems and had been married to an Agelith or village headman.
Her husband forbad her to tell him if he gave a wrong judgment,
on pain of being at once sent back to her home. Nevertheless
she intervened to assist a losing litigant in showing the Agelith
the absurdity of a judgment, and her husband ordered her to
return to her father's house, allowing her to take with her what-
ever she liked. At dinner she drugged her husband with skran
(a narcotic), and then had him carried to her father's house. On
awaking, the Agelith was told that he had been brought there as
what his wife liked best in his house. He revised his judgment,
and asked that in future his attention should be drawn to a
mistake.
A very similar incident is told in the Yalkut on Genesis, and
is to be found in Gerald Friedlander's 7ewish Fairy Tales (1917),
in the tale of Abraham and Ada of Sidona.
JOSEPH GOMPERS.

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