[46] In Andjra, a district of Morocco,
the people attribute many magical virtues to rain-water which has fallen
on the twenty-seventh day of April, Old Style; accordingly they collect
it and use it for a variety of purposes. Mixed with tar and sprinkled on
the door-posts it prevents snakes and scorpions from entering the house:
sprinkled on heaps of threshed corn it protects them from the evil eye:
mixed with an egg, henna, and seeds of cress it is an invaluable
medicine for sick cows: poured over a plate, on which a passage of the
Koran has been written, it strengthens the memory of schoolboys who
drink it; and if you mix it with cowdung and red earth and paint rings
with the mixture round the trunks of your fig-trees at sunset on
Midsummer Day, you may depend on it that the trees will bear an
excellent crop and will not shed their fruit untimely on the ground. But
in order to preserve these remarkable properties it is absolutely
essential that the water should on no account be allowed to touch the
ground; some say too that it should not be exposed to the sun nor
breathed upon by anybody.[47] Again, the Moors ascribe great magical
efficacy to what they call "the sultan of the oleander," which is a
stalk of oleander with a cluster of four pairs of leaves springing from
it. They think that the magical virtue is greatest if the stalk has been
cut immediately before midsummer. But when the plant is brought into the
house, the branches may not touch the ground, lest they should lose
their marvellous qualities.
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