Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/186

170 The result, of course, was that the supplicants were either sold into slavery at Bende and the Misi Aro slave-markets, or, if old and unfit for slavery, or even too powerful chiefs, they were sacrificed. All sorts of stories are told of this mystery. Hundreds of people visited the place yearly, and never returned. Some who never absolutely saw the grotto, being blindfolded, stood in the water by the cave, and heard mysterious voices talking all round them, while the catfish nibbled at their feet and splashed about in the pool. If they were to die the water was supposed to pour out of the source the colour of blood. This was probably done by some rascally old priest inside the cavern. There is an entrance into the cavern at the back of the Ju-Ju, and there are to be seen the scaffold and sacrificial knife. The most loathsome thing about the place is the altar of skulls, the stack of captured arms, surmounted by a skull, and the alligators and catfish, which were fed after the sacrifices."

"Very, very little," says Count de Cardi, writing to us, "has ever come to light as to what was actually carried on at the spot, and now that the whole place has been destroyed and the fetish priests scattered, I am afraid no more complete account will ever be compiled."—

The village and common of St. Briavel's stand on the edge of the Dean Forest, and though the common has long been enclosed, the old castle of the Constables is still the scene of Courts Leet, and the Crown officers go round yearly to spy out encroachments and the ravages of disforestable beasts. Seeing that the forest was at one time a sort of gathering place for gypsies, outlaws, and other turbulent folk, it is only natural that the present race should be small, dark, and untidy, whereas the people of the more fertile country are fair and rather pale. They are all expert poachers, but, outside the mining centres, share little interest in games or sports. Flower gardens, such as delight one in Kent, are