RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



SI 



eream-pot and butter-ball and also I am. trying to recollect how 

 many ton may pass through the cleft of the penitent's rock." 

 "Thou art a lean man," returned the merchant rather angrily, 

 " but if thou wert measured by the weight of thy sins, I reckon 

 nothing less than Jagger naut's bridge would let thee pass." 

 " Truly," said the barber sighing, " my neighbour, the rich mer- 

 chant, Ibrahim, is no fatter than I, yet he has marvellous need of 

 a wide hole to creep through, if his sins are to be counted by 

 inches and packed round him." The honest merchant opened his 

 eyes and ears with the avarice of curiosity at this hint, and sat 

 with his new-shaven head bare more than an hour, while the bar- 

 ber arrived, after a prodigious preamble, at the best part of his 

 story. " If your worshipful excellence will promise not to call 

 me as a witness before the Parsee council, you shall hear a most 

 strange secret. Ibrahim has corrupted his conscience Avith run- 

 ning among the English rajahs, who wear scarlet bajees and black 

 fans; and making mockery of our Brahmins, has taken a Pariah 

 into his garden-house to be his second wife." The president of 

 the Parsee council uplifted his eyes, and a tailor dropped the scis- 

 sors he was exercising with his toes, to attend more precisely. 

 " Not content with this," continued the barber, " which we Hin- 

 doos should think deserving a thousand bastinadoes, he has taken 

 his first poor wife by force from her muslin-chamber, and com- 

 pelled her to wear the old garments of the Pariah, to draw water 

 and carry pitchers, while the outcast wears pearls on her forehead, 

 dips her hair in rose water, and calls herself Ibrahim's first wife." 

 " Friend," said the merchant, " when your prophet Yeeshnu churn- 

 ed the sea, he brought forth seven things : a sun, a moon, an ele- 

 phant, a physician, a horse, a cup of good liquor, and a woman ; 

 and in my secret opinion, two of these might have been spared." 

 " Not the elephant," returned the barber, with imposing gravity, 

 "for he resembles a most honourable gentleman ; but there is no 

 need of a physician with a cup of good wine ; and the woman 

 and the moon together are enough to make any man mad." The 

 large counsellor smiled with exquisite complacency, and departed 

 to tell all he had heard of his neighbour. 



Before the next eve, as he expected, Ibrahim was summoned 



* A large cistern and round fragment of rock are celebrated by these 

 names at Mahabaliipooram, near Arjoon. In Bombay there is a cloven 

 rock through which penitents of all sizes endeavour to pass as a purgatory. 



