Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/251

 Rh Anancy the spider and Cunnie Rabbit the water deerlet in Sierra Leone stories, is played in Lower Congo stories by a gazelle, and the tar and wax which hold in the Uncle Remus and Sierra Leone stories of the Tar-baby and the Wax Girl are replaced by the fetish power of the Nkondi. As a native told me,—"When the image is used, the thief cannot run away, and, if the thief enters the house where the Nkondi is, he cannot get out." The charms put in the fetish are expected to paralyse the thief. In a story which I obtained from another source, the gazelle plays some tricks, as usual, on the leopard, and then himself sticks to the Nkondi.

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Wathen, Congo Beige.

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, a member of our Society, has kindly sent me a number of cuttings from Anglo-Indian newspapers, a few extracts from which seem to be worthy of preservation.

Buried treasure and snakes.—In the Tarai district in former days people used to make serpents out of the flour of the Urad pulse in order to slay their enemies and to protect buried treasure. Hence in this locality people are not disposed to excavate ruined cities. Before the flour snake is buried with the treasure, a solemn oath is administered to it that it will make over the hoard only to the legitimate descendants of the original owner, and then only in case they have fallen into extreme poverty. A stranger who appropriates such a hoard is sure to lose his wife, eldest son, and best pair of plough cattle. When the walls of old buildings fall down, "these serpents are destroyed, and the treasure jars, finding themselves unprotected, leave the place and fly away to conceal themselves in the nearest rivers and wells. Whenever the people at night hear the chinking of coins, they always infer from such sound that somebody's buried treasure is flying away in the air to the water." (Madras Times, Dec. 24, 1907.)