Page:Folk-lore of the Holy Land.djvu/234

ago, under the following strange circumstances, related by another fellâheh.

She was returning from Jerusalem, and as she was passing the fountain named “Ain El Hamyeh,” she heard a frog croak. Looking round she noticed close to the stream a female frog much advanced in pregnancy, and she thoughtlessly but ill-naturedly said to the creature, “Allah grant that you may not be delivered of your child till I be called to act as your midwife.” Having uttered this unkind speech, the woman went her way. In the evening she retired to rest with her children, whose father had died in the war, around her; but what was her terror when, awaking during the night, she found herself in a cave surrounded by strange and angry looking people, one of whom sternly told her that if she ventured “to name” she was a dead woman. “If we, who live below,” said he, “come to you who live above-ground, then it is a protection for you “to name”; but if, as in your case, one of you intrudes needlessly and officiously on us, “naming” will not help you. What harm had my wife done you that you should curse her as you did this afternoon?’ “I do not know, nor have I ever seen your wife,” replied the woman in terror. She was the pregnant frog you spoke to at ‘Ain El Hamyeh,” — was the answer; “when we who live underground, want to go abroad by day-time, we generally assume the form of some animal. My wife took that of the frog you saw. You cursed her and mentioned ‘the Name.’ She was in the pangs of labour but, in consequence of your cruel malediction, cannot be re-