Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/76

 would not put it into a book: a promise which I am compelled to break by the stern duties of my vocation. He told me that he was taken into a fetich-house, stripped, severely flogged, and plastered with goat-dung; this ceremony, like those of Masonry, being conducted to the sound of music. Afterwards there came from behind a kind of screen or shrine uncouth and terrible sounds such as he had never heard before. These, he was told, emanated from a spirit called Ukuk. He afterwards brought to me the instrument with which the fetich-man makes this noise. It is a kind of whistle made of hollowed mangrove wood, about two inches in length, and covered at one end with a scrap of bat's wing. For a period of five days after initiation the novice wears an apron of dry palm leaves, which I have frequently seen.

"The initiation of the girls is performed by elderly females who call themselves Ngembi. They go into the forest, clear a place, sweep the ground carefully, come back to the town, and build a sacred hut which no male may enter. They return to the clearing in the forest, taking with them the Igonji, or novice. It is necessary that she should have never been to that place before, and that she fast during the whole of the ceremony, which lasts three days. All this time a fire is kept burning in the wood. From morning to night, and from night to morning, a Ngembi sits beside it and feeds it, singing, with a cracked voice, The fire will never die out! The third night is passed in the sacred hut; the Igonji is rubbed with black, red, and white paints, and as the men beat drums outside, she cries, Okanda, yo! yo! yo! which reminds one of the Evohe! of the ancient Bacchantes. The ceremonies which are performed in the hut and in the wood are kept secret from the men, and I can say but little of them. Mongilomba had evidently been playing the spy, but was very reserved upon the subject. Should it be known, he said, that he had told me what he had, the women would drag him into a fetich-house, and would flog him, perhaps till he was dead.

"It is pretty certain, however, that these rites, like those of the Bona Dea, are essentially of a Phallic nature; for Mongilomba once confessed, that having peeped through the chinks of the hut, he saw a ceremony like that which is described in Petronius Arbiter