CUSTOMS AND MANNERS. 



401 



tered spot on the banks of the Nile, offering up their prayers, the 

 forehead at times touching the ground. Idiots are held in great re- 

 spect : whenever I have seen the Sheik el Misseri, a man renowned 

 in Alexandria and its neighbourhood for sanctity, he has been accom- 

 panied by one of this description* of people. In a conversation once 

 carried on by means of an interpreter between the Sheik and myself, 

 respecting some of the religious opinions of the Mahometans, I found 

 that he was well acquainted with the history of the creation, and with 

 many parts of the Bible. 



There is a tribe of civilized Arabs in Egypt, who pretend that they 

 are respected by serpents, and that no sort of snake can hurt them. 

 As a proof of this, there is an annual procession of the tribe through 

 the streets of Rosetta, of which I was a witness ; one of their number 

 is obliged to eat a living snake f in public, or so much of it as to 

 occasion its death. Probably the snake may have been rendered 

 harmless by some means ; the people, however, suppose that for 

 some act of piety performed by the ancestors of this tribe or family 

 (which is by no means numerous), the Prophet protects the descend- 

 ants from any injury which the snakes might occasion. The ophi- 

 ophagus, who is to keep up this ridiculous farce, being no doubt well 

 paid, begins to eat the living reptile ; a pretty large snake is held in 

 his hands, which writhes its folds around his naked arm, as he bites 

 at the head and body. Horror and fury are depicted in the man's 



* Baumgarten was told that madmen and idiots were respected as saints by the Maho- 

 metans, and that tombs were erected in honour of them when they died. — Peregrin, in 

 Egypt. 73. Pococke at Rosetta saw two of those naked saints, he says, who are com- 

 monly natural fools, and had in great veneration in Egypt. — Vol. i. 14. 



f Antes. Observ. on Egypt, 16., mentions the practice of eating serpents and scor- 

 pions. The custom of charming serpents has prevailed in the East from a very early 

 period, Psalm lviii. 5.; Ecclesiastes, x. 11. The charmers, however, were not always 

 secure from injury. " Who will pity a charmer that is bitten with a serpent?" Eccl. xii. 

 13. Forskal says that the leaves of Aristolochia sempervirens were used for forty days by 

 those who would wish to protect themselves against the bite of these animals. At Pella the 

 serpents, says Lucian, (Pseudom.) were so tame and familiar, that they were fed by the 

 women and slept with the children. — Ed. 



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