DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.10357#0047
24
PICTURESQUE PALESTINE.
to be the belief of the Arab
Greeks that unless they run
round the Sepulchre a certain
number of times the lire will not
come. Possibly, also, there is
some reminiscence of the funeral
games and races round the tomb
of an ancient chief. Accordingly,
the night before, and from this
time forward for two hours, a
succession of gambols takes
place, which an Englishman can
only compare to a mixture of
prisoner's base, football, and
leap-frog, round and round the
Holy Sepulchre. First he sees
these tangled masses of twenty,
thirty, fifty men, starting in a
run, catching hold of each other,
lifting: one of themselves on their
shoulders, sometimes on their
heads, and rushing on with him
till he leaps off, and some one
else succeeds; some of them
dressed in sheep-skins, some
almost naked, one usually pre-
ceding the rest as a fugleman,
clapping his hands, to which they
respond in like manner, adding
also wild howls, of which the
chief burden is ' This is the
tomb of Jesus Christ! — God
save the Sultan !—Jesus Christ
has redeemed us !' What begins
in the lesser groups soon grows
in magnitude and extent, till at
last the whole of the circle be-
tween the troops is continually
occupied by a race, a whirl, a torrent of these wild figures, like the witches' Sabbath in
VIA DOLOROSA —THE ECCE HOMO ARCH.
PICTURESQUE PALESTINE.
to be the belief of the Arab
Greeks that unless they run
round the Sepulchre a certain
number of times the lire will not
come. Possibly, also, there is
some reminiscence of the funeral
games and races round the tomb
of an ancient chief. Accordingly,
the night before, and from this
time forward for two hours, a
succession of gambols takes
place, which an Englishman can
only compare to a mixture of
prisoner's base, football, and
leap-frog, round and round the
Holy Sepulchre. First he sees
these tangled masses of twenty,
thirty, fifty men, starting in a
run, catching hold of each other,
lifting: one of themselves on their
shoulders, sometimes on their
heads, and rushing on with him
till he leaps off, and some one
else succeeds; some of them
dressed in sheep-skins, some
almost naked, one usually pre-
ceding the rest as a fugleman,
clapping his hands, to which they
respond in like manner, adding
also wild howls, of which the
chief burden is ' This is the
tomb of Jesus Christ! — God
save the Sultan !—Jesus Christ
has redeemed us !' What begins
in the lesser groups soon grows
in magnitude and extent, till at
last the whole of the circle be-
tween the troops is continually
occupied by a race, a whirl, a torrent of these wild figures, like the witches' Sabbath in
VIA DOLOROSA —THE ECCE HOMO ARCH.