128 THE TUNGUR-FUR OF DAR FURNUNG [app. 5

say, Fur and Tungur alike call themselves good Muhammadans—they

are escorted to the stone by the sheikh of the village or, in his absence, by one of his family, or, failing both, by the Imam of the village mosque, and there they each smear some dUin (or blood, if an animal has been

sacrificed) in the form of a cross with their forefingers on the side of the

boulder, and each deposits a stone or a piece of green grass from the grove on the top of it. If the couple are too poor to have afforded a sheep or any dihn they make instead the offering of a piece of cow-dung. This done, the couple are led on to the water-spring

in the palm-grove and there the presiding priest—if one may call him such—takes a piece of mud from the pool and dabs it on the foreheads of the couple, on the tips of their shoulders (in front), on their

middles^, on the points of their knees and in the small of their backs. He then binds a twist of green grass from the fringe of the pool round each of four ankles and wrists and round both necks, and the ceremony

is over.

Mutatis mutandis precisely the same is done, it is said, on the occasion

of a circumcision or a birth, but in the latter case it is the mother and not

the child who is the object of the rite. In the case of a hakim visiting 'Ayn Sirra he is similarly expected—or rather used to be, for these customs

are falling into disuse—to sacrifice a sheep and smear its blood in the form

of a cross on the stone, or else to mark it with diJin, and to make his

offering of a stone or a piece of green grass, and to go to the spring and be marked as described above, but—the only difference—a twist of grass was placed round his right wrist only.

The FtJR proper (so the "Tungur" say) have no part or lot in these

rites, and the reason would not seem far to seek. The Tungur, one supposes, brought with them from Christian Nubia the recollection of certain church

rites, in particular the Sign of the Cross, and though the Fur were never

converted to Christianity their holy stone was utilized by the new-comers. On the other hand, the Tungur in time became Muhammadans, witness

the mosque at Ferra, but both they and the Fur still preserve super-

stitiously some relics of their ancient faiths.

^ My informant described this by placing his finger just above his navel, but

called it his "heart."