Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/83

 Rh It seems, however, to be certain that in Eastern Central Africa there are two classes of people who practise witchcraft.

(1) Witches and wizards, who only try to hurt and injure others.

(2) Witch-doctors. These may do harm, but can also provide antidotes and charms of a more powerful nature than the "medicine" of the witch. They are supposed also to be able to prevent failure of crops, to have the power of making wild animals carry out their wishes, to be able to treat diseases, and in fact to meet any emergency.

I. Wizards and witches are supposed to work by night. Visiting the huts of their victims they place poison in the mouth, unless the sleeper is protected by wearing or using a charm. In these poisons the ejecta of the human body, nail-parings, &c., hold a prominent part. In other cases large snail-shells are buried by night at the door of the man against whom spite is entertained. Another Africa, and that whilst rude figures, or objects resembling figures, are used for purposes of witchcraft, they are never used for worship. The Rev. E. B. L. Smithy who joined the mission in 1884, writes: "I know of a large number of objects used for calming and raising storms, securing good luck for persons and things canoes, fishing-nets, guns, &c.) and ill luck for enemies. Of natural or manufactured objects intended for worship or regarded as the temporary or local habitation of a divinity or spirits, such as are found on the West Coast and in other parts of the world, I have never seen or heard of a single instance. . . . It is possible that some of Burton's tribe from the West may be settled somewhere about Mwera, and that the young Christian native, from whom the account of the idolatry was obtained, may belong to it, and that the objects obtained are such as Miss Kingsley and others have described. I am more inclined to think that the young native Christian rather reflected ideas gleaned from mission teaching and Bible reading (with a special stress on the Old Testament) in his accounts of the local idolatry, than the wisdom of the ancients of his people. We bring them new ideas, and either new names by which to call them, or we requisition a term with a meaning already well comprehended in their minds, though they may not be able to define it well for ours. In either case we are apt to insist that the terms mean exactly what we mean by them, and to forget that quite possibly they are used in an entirely different sense by the native who hears them for the first time, or who, forgetful of the new technical force, mingles with them other and older associations. Thus in the present primitive state of our knowledge of African tongues—still variable and devoid of literature—it is so hard to realise the precise value, each to each, of the many words that we employ to denote worship, idols, &c., that the margin for error, misapprehension, and the reading in of entirely foreign ideas, is almost boundless; and this apart from any suspicion of bias or the equally insidious vice of putting leading questions."—Central Africa, No. 250, p. 198.