Berbers of the Rif
province, in Northern Morocco, make great use of fires at midsummer
for the good of themselves, their cattle, and their fruit-trees.
They jump over the bonfires in the belief that this will preserve
them in good health, and they light fires under fruit-trees to keep
the fruit from falling untimely. And they imagine that by rubbing a
paste of the ashes on their hair they prevent the hair from falling
off their heads. In all these Moroccan customs, we are told, the
beneficial effect is attributed wholly to the smoke, which is
supposed to be endued with a magical quality that removes misfortune
from men, animals, fruit-trees and crops.
The celebration of a midsummer festival by Mohammedan peoples is
particularly remarkable, because the Mohammedan calendar, being
purely lunar and uncorrected by intercalation, necessarily takes no
note of festivals which occupy fixed points in the solar year; all
strictly Mohammedan feasts, being pinned to the moon, slide
gradually with that luminary through the whole period of the earth's
revolution about the sun.
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