Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/470

426 unless he became a member. The natives appear to have themselves tried to exterminate the society. According to evidence given at the enquiry before Sir D. P. Chalmers into the insurrection in Sierra Leone in 1898, it appears that about 1880-1 the chief of Tyama detected nearly 100 members, and burnt them. In 1883-4 a chief of Mano, called Cardini, burnt a sub-chief and about 80 others as members, and there are other instances. Nevertheless the society survived, and it was found necessary in 1896 to pass "The Human Leopard and Alligator Society Ordinance" for its suppression. It is the native story that the bofimah was originally kept alive by goats, but that a tribe whose ambush had been betrayed by the Imperri people in revenge sent the fetish into the Imperri country and decreed that human sacrifices were in future necessary.

A fetish spoon is shown in Fig. 5 (Pl. IX.), and an example of a fetish which is practically only an amulet in Fig. 8 (Pl. X.), which represents a charm called banyehn, 11½ inches long, and made of country iron in the form of tongs or pincers with spirally-twisted handles. Tongs or pincers are not uncommon as amulets. A pair occurs, for example, amongst a number of objects depending from an amuletic necklace in my possession which came from Nish in Servia,

The wandering Mohammedan "Mori men" or "book men" are looked on in the Protectorate as magicians, and have a monopoly of the supply of written charms. These are made up as sebbehs in leather cases, and Fig. 6 (Pl. IX.) shows some specimens attached to Bai Bureh's war cap. This cap is made of skin prepared in alternate strips of white and brown. Six sebbehs of various sizes are attached to the sides of the cap, and one large one with eight cowries to the top.

Fig. 10 shows a specimen of the steatite nomori or "farm devil" figures, which differs somewhat from the figures described and illustrated in Man for 1905 (pp. 97-100). Such figures are found by digging in the fields or in mounds far inland, and, as the present natives do not know how to carve steatite, the figures are probably the work of an extinct tribe. They are greatly valued, and are set up in the fields and whipped in