Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/256

 countrymen. The Mahommedans have been more fortunate, and whole populations have fervently embraced the faith of Islam.

The bulk of the nation has, however, remained faithful to their nature-worship. Nevertheless the Gallas believe in Wak, Waka, or Wakayo, a supreme god whom they confound with the sky, and pray to for rain during the dry season, and for victory over their enemies. They have also other inferior gods, to judge from their names evidently of foreign origin. Such are Saitan, the spirit of evil; Boventicha, the tutelar genius of the race; Oglieh, the god of generation, to whom sacrifices are offered at the commencement of the rainy season; and Atetieh, the goddess of fertility, whose least is celebrated at harvest time, which falls at the end of the winter. Moseover, they worship all living things and all formidable objects of nature, such as the forests, rivers, woods, mountains, thunder, and the winds; each family has its protecting tree, often an olive, which is named after the Virgin, St. Michael or some other saint, watered with the blood of sacrificial-victims reared on honey and beer. Of animals the serpent, "the father of the world," is the most worshipped, and many a cabin has its domestic snake. The northern Gallas have priests and sorcerers; these latter, called kalisha, greatly dreaded on account of their incantations, pretend that they can dispose of the future at their will, causing life or death, and conjuring the evil spirit. But still more terrible are the buda, or were-wolves, who transform themselves into wild beasts and cause death by a mere glance. Every person proved to be a "buda" is immediately butchered, and, as in mediæval Europe, it is the old women who usually fall victims to these popular superstitions. In the case of persons merely "possessed," an incessant drumming and exorcising is kept up, so as to drive out the zar, or evil spirit, and thus effect a cure. Thieves are scented out by the medium of a magician, or béba-shiaï, a high court functionary, who, according to Antinori, aided by the terror his shrewdness inspires, rarely fails to discover the culprit.

The Ilm-Ormas seldom practise polygamy, having only one wife, too often a mere slave charged with all the domestic duties, but considered unworthy to till the land, water the cattle, or milk the cows. The marriage forms are very numerous, and that of abduction is still honoured amongst certain tribes, the suitor's friends undertaking the seizure. He who manages to seize the young girl and carry her off in spite of her cries, becomes merely by this act her brother and protector; he brings her to the lover's hut, a cow is quickly killed, and the young girl sprinkled with its blood, which she also drinks. The union is henceforth inviolable, because the Ilm-Ormas, unlike the Somalis, "a nation of traitors and perjurers," never break their pledged word. However this abduction is often a mere pretence, the parents themselves bringing the sacrificial cow to the lover's dwelling. Sometimes it is the young girl who takes the initiative. She runs away from the paternal mansion bearing in her hand a tuft of fresh grass, with which she crowns the head of her lover; then kneeling down she strikes the ground to the right and to the left, as if to take possession of her chosen husband's residence. It even happens that the ugly or deformed girls, to whom no young man would be tempted to throw a necklet, the usual form of asking in marriage, are assisted by their parents at night