Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/74

60 forest, but there are others who believe that the spirits of good people go to the moon, and the spirits of evil ones go to the sun, where they have much pain.

Spirits working harm to a person, family, or town can be driven away by gun-firing, drumming, shouting, and other noises. Sometimes these spirits can be captured and enclosed in something. The following incident will well illustrate several of the above remarks about departed spirits:—Some few years ago Mbunga (deacon of the native church here at Wathen Station) and a few other natives went on a trading expedition. They arrived at a town where they halted for the night, and, as is the custom, a house was given them in which to sleep. They went and stretched themselves on their mats, but during the night they were disturbed by the entrance of a nganga who hid something in a jug. Thinking he was up to one of his tricks, they removed the thing from its hiding place and put it in one of their bundles. In the morning the nganga, who was employed to destroy the power of a spirit that was troubling a family in the town, was up early shouting at the spirit to desist; he threatened it and fired at it, and at last declared that he had caught it. He led the suffering family to the hut he had visited during the previous night, and entered it triumphantly and prepared them by his boastful talk for a great denouement, but, behold, the entrapped spirit was gone. The poor nganga was jeered at and driven from the town with contempt. The native traders, when they looked at the bundle, found it was tied up in imitation of a corpse, and on opening it discovered inside a piece of "kwanga" (native bread), and inside that a fowl's bladder full of blood. Ordinarily no native would touch an article belonging to a nganga. These native traders were former Mission school-boys.

The dead are always buried about sunset, the following reason being given for this custom:—Early every morning