Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/225

 Customs of the Lower Congo People. 191

initiated were going about the forest or were on their way to the neighbouring stream, a drum was beaten to keep the common folk away, and to warn off all peeping Toms.

When the ndembo was ready to receive those who desired to enter it, a nganga gave the sign, and the person to be initiated fell in some public place, such as a market or the centre of the town, and feigned death. A funeral cloth would then be spread over him or her, and he would be carried to the " mpanzu " (entrance to the ndembo stockade), and the ngangas themselves would carry the novice into the " vela," or the collection of huts or village inside the ndembo. The novice would then be said to have " died ndembo." When the novice fell to the ground, the nganga beat the earth round the " dead " with plantain stalks, chanted incantations, fired off guns, and danced about in a fantastic fashion. This undoubtedly excited the emotionally inclined persons present, and one after the other would fall in pretended death, and sometimes hysteria was induced that caused some to be carried off in a true cataleptic state. Young people and adults of both sexes would drop, feigning death, to the number of 50, 60, 100, or more until the place was full. Those acquainted with the emotional, impressionable nature of the negro will have no difficulty in recalling similar instances of widespread hysteria at so-called revivals in the West Indies, and ex- hibited also in voodooism.

In the vela the inhabitants were supposed to die, and their bodies to decompose until of each body only one bone remained, of which the nganga must take particular care. The people who have relatives in the vela must take a fair quantity of food every day or two to feed, so it is said, the ngangas, who turn the bodies as they decay and guard the various bones after the flesh has rotted away. Should the relatives neglect to take food, but be members of a powerful family that is able to revenge foul play, then their relative has a special " resurrection " all to himself or her-