Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/359

Rh but the phrase "konko kia 'se," or prohibition of the father. I have just been speaking to a young man who tells me that there are no such prohibitions in his family. Another well-informed man has told me that anyone could eat the mpangu without evil consequences if he ate fearlessly, and did not boast about what he had done.

The individual or personal tabu is called "nlongo," i.e., medicine, poison, or tabu. When a person is ill, the nganga who is called says that the patient is not to eat a certain kind of food, and for ever after the prohibited thing is tabu to them. To eat it is to break the protective spell and have a return of the complaint. The article prohibited is quite arbitrary, there being no relation whatever between the forbidden thing and the disease. Sometimes the nlongo is only for, say, six months, and then the nganga removes it and receives his fee. Sometimes it is put on an unborn baby, and is to remain on it until its hair is cut and nails trimmed, and, when that time comes, the nganga is sent for to cut the hair and nails and remove the tabu. Sometimes the tabu is put on the child until it marries, or until it has its first child, or until it gives birth to both a boy and a girl. The tabu may be the snout of a pig or all pig-meat, the head of a goat or all goat-meat, certain kinds of fish, or one or two kinds of vegetables. In one or two cases I know, the men are not to eat any form of cassava for life, which is like prohibiting an Englishman from eating flour in any form, whether bread or pastry, etc. In the case of persons troubled with fits, they are prohibited from looking in a looking-glass, or seeing their reflection in water.

In some parts "nlongo" and "konko" are equivalents, while in other districts "konko" carries with it the idea of prohibition, command, or regulation made by a chief or a nganga, and can thus be, on the one hand, a tabu for the benefit of the whole town over which the chief rules, when it is equal to a command or law, and on the other