Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/220

 1 86 Customs of the Lower Congo People.

of all these efforts, the woman continues ill, or becomes worse, they will take her secretly, as a last chance, in the dead of the night out of her house, and quietly carry her away to another town. By this means they hope to cheat the witch or evil spirit by taking the victim secretly beyond its ken, and consequently beyond its malign influence. They think that the knowledge of the witch and also of the evil spirit is very limited, and the area of its power very circumscribed. Whenever I missed a sick person from the town I never inquired too closely about her whereabouts, as, if the person you interrogated knew, he would not dare to reveal where the sick one had gone, for fear the witch should hear and follow.

If, notwithstanding all the efforts, the woman dies, and if the ngang' a moko said that the abscesses were due to natural causes, or that the woman was troubled by a spirit, nothing more can be done save to bury the body and have the usual wailing over it, with the ordinary funeral festivities. But, if the ngang' a moko declared that the woman was under the spell of witchcraft, the " ngang' a ngombo," or witch-finder, is called to take charge of the case. The ngang' a ngombo must not belong to the same clan as the deceased. This nganga has his assistant, who spends a day or so in the dead woman's town, ferreting out her past life, mode of living, habits, and temper — quarrelsome or otherwise. All the informa- tion thus gathered he passes on to his master, who, primed with the facts and with the road marked out to deceased's house with leaves and twigs by his boy, walks straight through the town to his client's house. A ring is formed, and the nganga, who may be male or female, dances and chants to the beat of drums, puts question after question, and is answered by the people with " ndungu " or " otuama " as he guesses wrongly or rightly about the woman's ways. Presently he elicits that she recently had a very bad quarrel with someone, and he then discovers it