Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/519

Rh are notes of the information I obtained. In making a sacrifice, an ox or "beast" is the largest, a goat the smallest offering. Only a rich man can offer a "beast." The usual offering is a goat, but sheep are now also killed. The animal is slaughtered by stabbing the breast. It is allowed to linger while an invocation is pronounced to the spirits of the departed, calling on them for help. They are invoked by turn, beginning with the most recent, and are addressed by name—"So-and-so, son of so-and-so," and so forth. All the departed whom the people remember should be named and the list exhausted before the invocation is finished and the animal finally despatched. If an ox be killed, the people making the offering surround the cattle-kraal and pronounce the invocation before they send for the assegai to stab it. The gall of the slaughtered animal is sprinkled first on the right forefinger, then on the shoulders, and lastly on the navel. If the offering be on the occasion of a marriage, the bride is sprinkled that she may win favour with the spirits, and so obtain children. If it be for a sick person, the patient is sprinkled. In fact, everyone on whose behalf an offering is made is thus sprinkled. A little of the gall is also drunk. The small stomach of the animal killed is hung up at the back of the hut (inside) as an offering for the spirits. Several of the men present at Laduma's feast wore in their hair the gall-bladder of a goat. It was explained to me that if a goat were killed as an offering on account of a son, the son was entitled to wear (or did wear) the gall-bladder. If the goat were killed for a patient, the medicine-man kept the bladder and wore it.