Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/500

 436 The Bmitti Element m Swahili Folklore.

been forgotten."- I think we have here a survival of the old Bantu harvest custom, by which no one was allowed to eat of the firstfruits before they had been tasted, with certain ceremonies, by the chief; a custom which, in its Zulu form {iikushwamd), is fully described in the South African Folk-Lore Journal, (Nov., 1879, pp. 134-9). The custom described in the passage immediately preceding, which I now quote, would seem to have had a similar origin : —

"If a friend has come to see him," — the owner of the field where miama is being reaped, — " they break off for him a head of miama, and it is beaten out, and (the grains) put on a plate and given him to eat, and when he goes away they break off three heads and give them to him as a present. And in like manner, at the rice harvest, if a friend comes along, a bunch of rice is broken off and a woman roasts it and it is given him to eat ..." Then follows, — " If a man gathers in much millet or rice, he makes an offering (sadaqa) to give to the poor," — which, of course, is entirely Islamic.

Now, as to the spirits, to return to our first quotation, they sound mysterious enough, and I suspect that two entirely different things have been mixed up because they coincide in prescribing abstinence from something. In another part of the same book, a chapter is devoted to these same spirits, under the appellations above given, and many more ; and the drummings, songs, and dances necessary for the expulsion of each one are detailed at length. Each of these spirits forbids the patient (through the practitioner called in) some kind of food ; e.g., those possessed by the diingumaro may not eat mutton, and the shamfigombe does not allow beef, while " those possessed by the kinyamkera must eat no fresh food without mavumba flour." As already stated, I cannot help thinking that this last is a confusion with the general prohibition of firstfruits. No doubt we have here to do with a genuine tabu, and indeed

^The dictionaries give vuniba (ox f umbo), pi. ma-, as "a lump of flour."