Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/72

58 Luanda or thereabouts telling the following story: A man caught a fish, and was proceeding to kill it: the fish begged him not to kill it, for anyone drinking water which came from its mouth (or in which it had remained for any time) would never die by fair means or from natural causes; only by witchcraft could their death be accomplished. This water was hawked about the country and believed in very thoroughly by great numbers, even in San Salvador itself. It really promised very little when the firm native belief in witchcraft is remembered; it was, nevertheless, a great success as a means of duping the ignorant, foolish people. When it was seen that the purchasers died like ordinary mortals the traffic ceased."

"About the year 1872 some natives of Luanda came through the country preaching a crusade against fetishes of all kinds inducing the natives in town after town to destroy all their fetishes, assuring them that since death and sickness came by the exercise of the black art, which every one fully believes, if then every fetish were destroyed and no more made, there would be no more death and suffering. Far and wide the most strenuous efforts were made to accomplish the destruction of all charms to that happy end." This expected dawn of the golden age ended, like the others, in disappointment to the credulous.

The natives have no theory about the origin of things, not even legends of the ancient ones who gave birth to their forefathers and were the originators of their tribes and clans.

The sun and the moon once met together, and the sun plastered some mud over a part of the moon and thus covered up some of the light, and that is why a part of the moon is often in shadow. When this meeting took place there was a flood, and the ancient people put their porridge (lukw) sticks to their backs and turned into monkeys. The present race of people is a new creation.