Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/494

 452 The Congo Medicine- Man.

against an enemy, and lembola e nkisi is to invoke bene- ficent power on behalf of a friend by removing the curse by various rites and ceremonies. The same fetish is used for both purposes.

Some of the ngangas in the following list are common to the whole of the Lower Congo, others are known only in certain localities, and others are known by one name in one district and another name in another district. It will be observed that some are more beneficent than malignant in their operations, but it may be stated as an axiom that, the more malignant a uganga can be for evil, the more beneficent he can also be in removing curses and curing diseases. The powerful fetishes that give malignant diseases are also supposed to be able to cure them when properly appeased by the ngangas cere- monies.

1, Ngang a wuka, — {wuka, to cure or heal), — is a general practitioner who deals in simples and charms for curing diseases.*^

2. Ngang' a nioko, — {moko, arms). Whatever this may have meant originally, it has no intelligible meaning now. The moko is sometimes a bundle of charms, and sometimes a small box of charms, and the moko doctor is more frequently a woman than a man. A red bead is taken to her from the patient, and she puts this bead under her pillow and dreams about the complaint of the patient who has sent it. In the morning she tells the messenger the cause of the illness and the treatment to be followed. This nganga only goes to the patient in a very bad case. The fee is i fowl and 500 strings of blue pipe beads ; should she go to the town of the patient, she receives another fowl before she begins her ceremonies. The special function of this nganga is to state whether the patient is bewitched or not. Should the ngang' a W7ika fail to cure his client, he lays his failure at the door of witchcraft, and

^Vol. XX., pp. 183-4.