Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/451

 Bavili Notes. 393

Ximanpandu (what this is I do not know) and ask him to sell him some. The Nganga will ask him if he is really desirous to obtain it, and the Miintu a Ndoiigo answers yes. The Nganga sells him the medicine. The Mimtu a Ndoiigo says he cannot see the leopard or crocodile. Then the Nganga takes the medicine and gives the Mnntu a Ndongo some, and rubs some into his eyes, and asks him if he can now see the leopard.

The Miintu a Ndongo answers yes, and goes his way conscious that he owns a leopard or crocodile to do his will.

All leopards do not lend themselves to these horrible practices, and such as do not are said to belong to the Bakici Bad, or the " powers " on earth (see page 376).

Since my visit to Ximoko I have noted the following cases of the ravages said to have been worked by the wicked class of leopards.

I. Xikawmo is a man who has lived with white men all his life, can read and write, and wears European clothes. He was with his master in Somboa, quite near to Loango, and it was here that the following sad event occurred. Three boys, one of them the son of Xikawmo, were sleeping in an outhouse serving as a kitchen. One night a leopard entered this place, and passing over one of the boys, deliberately attacked and killed the son of Xikawmo, only wounding the boy nearest the door in his flight.

Xikawmo went to Maloango,^ and after relating the whole aiifair to him said, " How is this ? I want to know who had this leopard." Then they set the Ngangas to work, and it was divined that it was a man of the village of Ntanda Bilala who owned this particular leopard. Then Xikawmo said, " Very well ; now I want to know who ate the flesh of this man of Bilala," for if one of his

^ The native king:.