Semitic magic : its origins and development

ARAB LEGENDS OF SATAN. XXXlll
He came in and said, '^ My father sends his peace, and
wishes to have this flint stone woven." A man with
a goat-beard said, " Tell your father to have it spun, and
then we will weave it." The son went back, and the
Devil was very angry, and told his son never to put forth
any suggestion when a goat-bearded man was present, " for
he is more devilish than we." ^ Curiously enough. Rabbi
Joshua ben Hananiah makes a similar request in a contest
against the wise men of Athens, who have required him
to sew together the fragments of a broken millstone. He
asks in reply for a few threads made of the fibre of the
stone.^ The good folk of Mosul, too, have ever prided
themselves on a ready wit against the Devil. Time was,
as my servant related to me,^ when Iblis came to Mosul
and found a man planting onions. They fell to talking,
and in their fellowship agreed to divide the produce of
the garden. Then, on a day when the onions were ready,
the partners went to their vegetable patch and the man
said, " Master, wilt thou take as thy half that which is
above ground, or that which is below ? " Now the Devil
saw the good green shoots of the onions sprouting high,
and so carried these off as his share, leaving the gardener
chuckling over his bargain. But when wheat time came
round, and the man was sowing his glebe on a day, the
Devil looked over the ditch and complained that he had
made nothing out of the compact.
" This time," quoth he,
we will divide differently, and thou shalt take the tops "
and 80 it fell out. They visited the tilth together when
the corn was ripe, and the fellah reaped the field and
1 Baldensperger, P.E.F., 1893, 207.
2 Talmud^ Bekoroth^ 86, quoted Jewish Encycl.^ i, 289.
^ For the Arabic version see P.S.B.A., January, 1908.
;