Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/70

56 Every man who toils hard in trading, smithing, or working for white men does so to enrich himself, and also his family as a whole, but the main incentive to labour is to prepare a great funeral for himself. He hopes and believes that the greater proportion of his wealth will be wound round his body, and that much of his other property will be put in the grave with him to be taken by him to the forest town. Chiefs of importance had wives and slaves killed and buried with them so that they might not go alone along the lonely road to the forest town.

There was nothing known about Nzambi (God), for all that had been known was forgotten. The Devil (Nkadi a mpemba) was known, and it was thought that he lived together with the witches (ndoki), and that all the witchcraft power came from him; in fact, in some districts Nkadi a mpemba and ndoki are interchangeable. He was more feared than Nzambi, and because of his cruel, malignant nature it was necessary to appease him. All their fetishes, charms, and "medicine men," together with their sacrifices of fowls and goats, are either to circumvent him or to gain his good-will.