Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/542

478 under it. All the plates, dishes, and small saucepans used during the confinement are brought out of the house, and put near the booth. At dawn a plate of palm wine is procured, and the "ngang' a nkisi" dips some "lemba-lemba" leaves in the wine and sprinkles the baby, the mother, and the father, after which he asks the crowd three times if they know the child's name. They answer,—"No, we don't know the name." The nganga shouts out,—"It is Lombo." The people then make a noise by clapping their mouths. The folk, on hearing the name Lombo, would know that the child was a girl, for, if a boy, it would have been called Etoko, and they also know from the name given that the mother has dreamed of ximbi, or water, or snakes. The nganga would receive as his fee one fowl, 15 strings of blue beads, and all the utensils that had been put outside the house.

When the child grows up, it receives presents from its relatives on account of its spirit nature. The ximbi are supposed to endow one thus born with various powers and fairy gifts, and hence presents are given to "Lombo" and "Etoko " children by relatives and neighbours, to gain the goodwill of these incarnations or favourites of the ximbi. As stated above, snakes are either under the special protection of the ximbi or are incarnations of them, and, on account of this connection, snakes are not killed or hurt in a house where these spirit children have been born, and neither "Lombo" nor "Etoko" children are allowed to kill snakes, lest they should kill one of their kith and kin. They do not drive them from their houses, and snakes, apparently conscious of their immunity, are most frequently found in the houses of those men and women called "Etoko" and "Lombo." Again, the most vulnerable part of a snake is its head, and people must not strike these spirit children on the head. There is an indefinable but clear connection in the native mind between the ximbi, snake, and the spirit children "Lombo" and "Etoko."

These water-spirit children can impart not only good