Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/66

52 leave all the charms and fetishes severely alone, and no one will think the better or worse of him, but he must believe in witchcraft, and in witches and their occult power, or his life will be made wretched with accusations of witchcraft. But for witchcraft no one would die, and the earnest longing of all right-minded men and women is to clear it out of the country by killing every discovered witch. It is an act of self-preservation. This hunting out the witch, this tracking down of the evil thing, is open to all kinds of abuses, affording many opportunities to chiefs, to "medicine-men" (nganga), and to others to clear an enemy out of the way; nevertheless, at the bottom of it all is the desire to end that which is causing deaths daily and filling the land with sorrow and tears. Belief in witches is interwoven into the very fibre of every Bantu-speaking man and woman, and the person who does not believe in them is a monster, a witch, to be killed as soon as possible.

Another essential tenet of the native is a firm belief in the nkasa ordeal, and that it has such detective power that an accused person taking it is either honoured or cruelly murdered, according to the effect the nkasa poison has on his stomach in causing vomiting or otherwise. The man who expresses doubts about the effectiveness of the nkasa ordeal does so at the risk of his life.

The lives of the natives are affected and regulated by taboo. The taboo must not be lightly pooh-poohed, as their health, good luck, and happiness are assured by their due observance of it.

The native pure and simple is the plaything of omens, warnings, auguries, portents, and such like prognostications of good and evil. He may occasionally be inclined to disregard them, but he is not allowed to do so by his friends. If the omen is against him, and he will not take warning, his comrades and relatives will