Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/73

Rh Another statement is that when the flood came the men turned into monkeys and women into lizards. The monkey's tail is the man's gun.

The sky is supposed to be like the ceiling of a house and that far off there are pillars supporting this ceiling. Lads who have travelled to England are frequently asked if they have seen the pillars that support the sky.

Above the sky or ceiling is a river which frequently wears away its bed and comes through in the form of rain. The thunder is the voice of a great fetish called Nzaji, and the lightning is Nzaji himself. The sun sets at evening in the sea, and during the night, while the people are sleeping, it steals back to the East, ready to rise the next morning. When there is a halo round the moon they think the spirits of the departed are sitting and talking there, but when there is a circle round the sun they believe that the departed spirit of a bad person is being judged and consigned to the sun as a punishment. Should this circle appear on the day of a death, the relatives of the deceased will weep and wail long and loudly, because they think their parted one has gone to be punished. Some women went to the farms to-day (July 21, 1908), and soon after their arrival they noticed a ring round the sun. The thought of the punishment to the departed and the fear of some unknown evil happening to themselves caused them to return at once to their houses.

They never try to recall the spirit of a dead person, but they ask the spirit why it left them. They give the departing spirit messages to take to their relatives in the spirit land. On the other hand, when a person sneezes, another says "sazuka" (come quickly). They think that the spirit leaves the body in the sneezing, and thus they tell it to return.

Most people think that departed spirits inhabit the