Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/50

36 In another district other means are used, as follows:—They call the "nganga elemba," who takes some palm wine in a wooden plate or bowl; he dips his fingers in the wine, and then touches the lips of the fighters with the front, the back, and then the front again of his fingers, and tells them not to look back nor enter a house, but to go right away to the fight. This charm puts them under such a spell that they need not fear any possibility of harm or danger.

Those that remain in the town get a fetish—the "nzaji" (said to cause lightning), or the "mbambi" (said to be able to give and cure diseases), or the "kumfw" (same power as mbambi), or the "mbanz' a ngola" (a wooden image stuck over with nails and knives, a fee being paid to the owner and a knife or nail stuck in the image where you want your enemy to feel pain),—whichever they have faith in, and dance the "loka nloko" (to bewitch with witchcraft) round it, saying: "You fetish, you must kill any one who is bewitching our fighting men." If a man is killed during a fight, he does not die by bullet or knife, but by witchcraft.

If a man is killed, the fight rages round the corpse for its possession, and often in fighting for the body several others are killed. If the corpse falls into the hands of the enemy, they cut off the head, soak it in water until the skull is cleaned of all flesh, and then put it on a pole and place it at the entrance to the victor's town, or in a prominent place on a hill. It is then an emblem of shame to the conquered. Sometimes the skull is cleaned and used by the victor as a drinking cup. The reason why they fight so fiercely for the body is that, if the head is cut off, the spirit of the slaughtered man will haunt, and by witchcraft kill, not the man who killed him, but members of his own family. Thus, on the one hand they fight to preserve the body intact, so as not to have the vengeance of the spirit falling on them as a