blood is well illustrated
in a story told by the Arab chronicler Tabari. He relates how Sapor,
king of Persia, besieged the strong city of Atrae, in the desert of
Mesopotamia, for several years without being able to take it. But the
king of the city, whose name was Daizan, had a daughter, and when it was
with her after the manner of women she went forth from the city and
dwelt for a time in the suburb, for such was the custom of the place.
Now it fell out that, while she tarried there, Sapor saw her and loved
her, and she loved him; for he was a handsome man and she a lovely maid.
And she said to him, "What will you give me if I shew you how you may
destroy the walls of this city and slay my father?" And he said to her,
"I will give you what you will, and I will exalt you above my other
wives, and will set you nearer to me than them all." Then she said to
him, "Take a greenish dove with a ring about its neck, and write
something on its foot with the menstruous blood of a blue-eyed maid;
then let the bird loose, and it will perch on the walls of the city, and
they will fall down." For that, says the Arab historian, was the
talisman of the city, which could not be destroyed in any other way. And
Sapor did as she bade him, and the city fell down in a heap, and he
stormed it and slew Daizan on the spot.[207]

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Jews and in Syria.]

According to the Talmud, if a woman at the beginning of her period
passes between two men, she thereby kills one of them; if she passes
between them towards the end of her period, she only causes them to
quarrel violently.[208] Maimonides tells us that down to his time it was
a common custom in the East to keep women at their periods in a separate
house and to burn everything on which they had trodden; a man who spoke
with such a woman or who was merely exposed to the same wind that blew
over her, became thereby unclean.[209] Peasants of the Lebanon think
that menstruous women are the cause of many misfortunes; their shadow
causes flowers to wither and trees to perish, it even arrests the
movements of serpents; if one of them mounts a horse, the animal might
die or at least be disabled for a long time.[210] In Syria to this day a
woman who has her courses on her may neither salt nor pickle, for the
people think that whatever she pickled or salted would not keep.[211]
The Toaripi of New Guinea, doubtless for a similar reason, will not
allow women a