Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/469

Rh A third society, the Yassi or Yasey, consists of women who already belong to the Bundu and of Porro men. The Yassi official Ya-mama can enter the Porro lodge by a private passage. Everything belonging to the Yassi must be spotted with coloured patches, except the black minsereh figures, Fig. 4, which are kept in the Yassi house near the fetish medicine. To obtain information from the fetish, the Ya-mama anoints the figure with the medicine, brings it out from the Yassi house with certain ceremonial, and holds it out by both hands at the waist, so that it can swing, the figure being made of light wood. Should the answer to the question put be favourable, the figure gradually inclines towards the Ya-mama. The figure shown is 32 inches high. (Plate IX.)

The Human Leopard Society is one charged by most accounts with cannibalism, either ceremonial or with a fetish excuse for obtaining human flesh in time of peace. The main object of the society appears, however, to have been to obtain human fat to anoint, and so bring into activity, a made-up fetish such as Bai Bureh's bofimah or "medicine-bag,"—shown in Fig. 7. Bai Bureh was the principal leader of the Timini against the British in the rising of 1898-9, and used this fetish for thought-reading and forecasting events. It consists of a hardened paste surrounded by several layers of cloth covered outside by red cloth, stiffened by pieces of cane, and bound in sausage form by cord. A small horn was originally attached, but has unfortunately been lost. The Human Leopard Society began about 40 years ago, and each member was required, on entry and, some say, also every fourth year, to supply a victim. The society's slayer lurked in the bush until the designated prey passed, and then leaped on him from behind with a leopard's cry, and drove into the back of his neck the forked knife shown in Fig 9. The body was then cut open to obtain the fat which enabled the bofimah to grant any wish. Sometimes the leopard's claws were imitated, not by the forked knife shown, but by a leopard-skin glove fitted with curved sharp blades. A new member was recruited by inviting him to a feast, giving him a little human flesh 'unbeknownst,' and then telling him what he had eaten, and that he would die