THE SAMARITAN PASSOVER OF THE YEAR 1861. 217 



partake. He says " No : the Samaritans would never allov^ 

 it." Then he reminds me of the words of the Law — " There 

 shall no stranger eat thereof." All the same, he presently 

 secures a morsel for me, which he bids me hide out of sight. 

 I did hide it, and I have it to this day. 



But whilst this has been going on, the lambs have been 

 prepared for the furnace. Each is suspended — and you may 

 imagine what a shock it gave me to see it — each is suspended 

 on a cross of laood. I daresay this is only done for convenience 

 — that the men may handle the carcase and put it into and out 

 of the fire the more easily, but it is strange to see on Mount 

 Gerizim this shadow of Mount Calvary. I thought at the 

 time that I had made a discovery, but I learnt later on that 

 Justin Martyr, who was a native of Nablus and no doubt had 

 seen its Passover seventeen centuries ago, referred to this 

 feature ; he says that the J ews did the same, but he probably 

 inferred that from the practice of the Samaritans. Whilst the 

 lamb is thus suspended, it is of course disembowelled and the 

 entrails are buried. All this took some time, but it was all 

 done to the accompaniment of chanting, interspersed, I must 

 say, with a good deal of chattering. A foreleg was then cut 

 off. I ask Amram what this means, and he replies that it is 

 the "portion of Levi," the "wave-shoulder" which was the 

 priests' share. Now the six crosses, supporting the six carcases, 

 are held in a circle round the mouth of the pit or oven. Two 

 or three men lay hold of each cross. The furnace has just been 

 fed with fuel — fuel of crackling thorns — and great tongues of 

 flame leap out of the opening, to the great delight of the 

 children. The intoning is resumed, and at a certain word — 

 perhaps the words " Burnt with fire " — the six bodies are at 

 the same moment plunged into the oven. It is not an easy 

 thing to do, for the greatest care has to be taken lest any lamb 

 in its descent should touch the side of the furnace. A wooden 

 framework is now hurriedly placed over the mouth of the oven ; 

 on this grass is heaped, and earth again upon the grass, the 

 whole being plastered down and cemented together with water, 

 so as to seal up the oven. Then, there is a long break in the 

 proceedings, for the process of roasting will take some hours, 

 and we have already been two hours over the rite, and that 

 after a most tiring day, so we retire to rest in Shellabi's tent^ 

 after a meal of tea and eggs and dates and cheese. 



At half past ten or eleven Shellabi wakes us ; I had been 

 roused before, but only for a moment, to find some scorpion or 

 other reptile crawling over me. He tells me that the lambs 



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