Page:Folk-lore of the Holy Land.djvu/154

Jerusalem, the difficulty of reconciling these statements is obvious.

P. 82. Jeremiah’s Grotto. — Jeremiah’s Grotto is so called from the belief that the book of “Lamentations” was composed and written there; while the sheer artificial precipice, at the foot of which it opens, is identified by modern Jewish legend as the “Beth-ha-Sekelah,” or place of execution by stoning, mentioned in the Mishna. From this circumstance some have supposed that St Stephen was stoned here; and also that the top of the hillock, now occupied by a Moslem cemetery, was Calvary. This is not the place to discuss such speculations. The spot where the relics of the proto-martyr, said to have been discovered about a.p. 415, as the result of a vision vouchsafed to Lucianus, a priest of Kaphar-Gamala—wherever that village may have been—were buried with solemn rites, is shown in the recently and totally rebuilt church just north of the hillock, which stands on the site of that erected by the Empress Eudocia and consecrated in a.d. 460. It was a remarkable fact which can be proved by reference to pilgrim-writers, that at different periods of the history of Jerusalem, various spots, north, south, east, and west of the city, have been pointed out in connection with the death and burial of St Stephen.

P. 83. Turbet Birket Mamilla.—The great Mohammedan cemetery bearing this name is situated about half a mile west of Jerusalem. Modern research has shown that in crusading times and long before, it was a Christian burial-ground, the last resting-place of the canons of the Church and Abbey of the Holy Sepulchre.^[1] It is remarkable for a large pool or birket called by Christian tradition the upper Pool of Gihon, by Jewish, Millo. In the cemetery itself, are the tombs of several distinguished Moslems, and, as might be expected, some interesting legends are connected with it. The oldest of these is attached to a cave some distance west of the pool and called the “Charnel-house of the Lion.” Its story is as follows:—

Many hundreds of years ago their lived in Persia a great king who was both an idolater and a magician. He dwelt in a lofty tower in the topmost story of which was a temple where he worshipped the heavenly bodies with unholy rites, such as the sacrifice of new-born babes. In this temple might be seen very curious machinery which caused images of the deities, that