fro.  Sometimes small fires are also kindled inside the tents.  They say that the smoke confers blessings on everything with which it comes into contact.  At Salee, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, persons who suffer from diseased eyes rub them with the ashes of the midsummer fire; and in Casablanca and Azemmur the people hold their faces over the fire, because the smoke is thought to be good for the eyes.  The Arab tribe Ulad Bu Aziz, in the Dukkala province of Morocco, kindle midsummer bonfires, not for themselves and their cattle, but only for crops and fruit; nobody likes to reap his crops before Midsummer Day, because if he did they would lose the benefit of the blessed influence which flows from the smoke of the bonfires.  Again, the Beni Mgild, a Berber tribe of Morocco, light fires of straw on Midsummer Eve and leap thrice over them to and fro.  They let some of the smoke pass underneath their clothes, and married women hold their breasts over the fire, in order that their children may be strong.  Moreover, they paint their eyes and lips with some black powder, in which ashes of the bonfire are mixed.  And in order that their horses may also benefit by the fires, they dip the right forelegs of the animals in the smoke and flames or in the hot embers, and they rub ashes on the foreheads and between the nostrils of the horses.  Berbers of the Rif province, in northern Morocco, similarly 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.[553]

[Beneficial effect ascribed to the smoke of the fires; ill luck supposed to be burnt in the Midsummer fires; the Midsummer festival in North Africa comprises rites concerned with water as well as with fire; the Midsummer festival in North Africa is probably older than Mohammedanism.]

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.  But in some parts of Morocco people at midsummer kindle fires of a different sort, not for the sake of fumigation, but in order to burn up misfortune in the flames.  Thus on Midsummer Eve the Berber tribe of the Beni Mgild burn three sheaves of unthreshed wheat or barley, “one for the children, one for the crops, and one for the animals.”  On the same occasion they burn the tent of a widow who has never given birth to a child; by so doing they think to rid the village of ill luck.  It is said that at midsummer the Zemmur burn a tent, which belongs to somebody who was killed in war during a feast; or if there is no such person in the village, the schoolmaster’s tent is burned instead.  Among the Arabic-speaking Beni Ahsen it is customary for those who live near the river Sbu to make a little hut of straw at midsummer, set it on fire, and let it float down the river.  Similarly the inhabitants of Salee burn a straw hut on the river which flows past their town.[554]