Thus Also Apollonius Of
Tyana And His Companions, In A Desert Near The Indus By Moonlight, See An
Empusa Or Ghul Taking Many Forms.
They revile it, and it goes off
uttering shrill cries.
Mas'udi also speaks of the mysterious voices heard
by lone wayfarers in the Desert, and he gives a rational explanation of
them. Ibn Batuta relates a like legend of the Western Sahara: "If the
messenger be solitary, the demons sport with him and fascinate him, so
that he strays from his course and perishes." The Afghan and Persian
wildernesses also have their Ghul-i-Beaban or Goblin of the Waste, a
gigantic and fearful spectre which devours travellers; and even the Gael
of the West Highlands have the Direach Ghlinn Eitidh, the Desert
Creature of Glen Eiti, which, one-handed, one-eyed, one-legged, seems
exactly to answer to the Arabian Nesnas or Empusa. Nicolo Conti in the
Chaldaean desert is aroused at midnight by a great noise, and sees a vast
multitude pass by. The merchants tell him that these are demons who are in
the habit of traversing the deserts. (Schmidt's San. Setzen, p. 352; V.
et V. de H. T. 23, 28, 289; Pliny, VII. 2; Philostratus, Bk. II. ch.
iv.; Prairies d'Or, III. 315, 324; Beale's Fahian; Campbell's Popular
Tales of the W. Highlands, IV. 326; I. B. IV. 382; Elphinstone, I.
291; Chodzko's Pop. Poetry of Persia, p. 48; Conti, p. 4; Forsyth, J.
R. G. S. XLVII. 1877, p. 4.)
The sound of musical instruments, chiefly of drums, is a phenomenon of
another class, and is really produced in certain situations among
sandhills when the sand is disturbed.
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