Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/395

 Rh (a most unusual and unheard-of thing for her). There was too much wangie-wangie (talking, talking). All the time went to make 'em Kobba-Kobba. She had three very bad wounds on her head, from which Jack had to cut the hair before applying vaseline. I thought at first she had a broken finger; but no, it was only badly smashed, and it had to be poulticed. She was satisfied, and seemed all right to-day.

The natives employed here at the hotel have been in an abject state of terror of Debil-Debil, and on mentioning it to other people we find their natives too have been very frightened. We had several buck niggers in to our room the other night and questioned them. Their teeth were chattering so that they could hardly speak. It appears debil-debil had visited the stables—had come sometimes early in the evening, sometimes during the night; in some cases several times in a night, preventing the natives from sleeping. He wanted to kill someone—who, they did not know—whether man, woman, or child. He had a glass-headed spear, and his only dress (?) was a pair of shoes, made not like proper shoes, but leaving no footmarks behind. He had come across the water, but on what we could not find out. Mr. Hager, to satisfy the men, took his gun out and fired a shot to shoot debil-debil. Making inquiry next morning, I was told debil-debil go away now. An old gin working for Mrs. Baldock further told me, when man along a public-house shootem debil-debil, he sing out, all same ibis. She said she had seen him, and he had a long white beard and hair. As the old woman is nearly blind, and she is the only woman who has done so, it is a query. She showed how he sing out, but it is an unpronounceable sound to write. She also showed me four or five long scratches on her upper arm, which she declared debil-debil had made, trying to catch her; and Mrs. Baldock said the woman had tied a string so tightly round the arm above the scratches that it was