Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/67

Rh use physical force to save him from himself. If the omen indicates that he will be killed in the coming fight, or die on the trading expedition, and he wishes in spite of the augury to go, his friends will securely tie him with ropes and lock him in a house to keep him from disregarding the omen.

A man may believe or disbelieve in ngangas (native "medicine-men" or wizards) without dire consequences necessarily resulting from his scepticism; he may snub a nganga, and talk slightingly of his charms, his fetishes, and his power; he may pass one by to call in a distant nganga, and suffer no inconvenience from his jeering treatment of one or twenty ngangas, but he must believe in witches and the ordeal. The village nganga is seldom, if ever, engaged by the natives of the village in which he lives. They know too much about him to waste their money on him. They see him repairing his charms and fetishes from the depredations of rats, cockroaches, and white ants. They know his charms are unable to keep him, his wife, his children, or even his goats, pigs, and dogs in good health; so they flout him and send for the nganga of another village of whom they know little or nothing. Therefore a faith in all ngangas is not a necessary part of their creed.

Their fetishes are very numerous, but no one believes in them all. Each native has his own particular few, which he regards with awe and respect, sprinkles occasionally with fowl's or goat's blood, and patronizes in a general sort of way. All others he regards with more or less contempt. If every one had firm faith in everybody else's fetishes as well as in his own this land would be a paradise. There would be no lying, no thieving, no adultery, etc., for there are many fetishes to expose liars, thieves, and adulterers, and it is because they have no faith in those fetishes that untruthfulness.