Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/499

 The Congo Medicine- Man. 457

to make for them a tikimf a evata (town charm). The nganga arrives in due time with his bag of charms. A plain post of le^nbanzaii wood is procured, and a hole is cut in the top. Into this hole some of the strong ziinibi charm is put, and a piece of palm gossamer is tied over the top. A hole is then dug in the ground just outside the town by the side of the road along which the women pass when fetching water from the stream. A goat is killed, and the head is put in the hole, and the fetish stick placed on it. (This is supposed to keep the white ants away from the stick.) The blood is poured over the hole in the stick, bathing thus the charms in blood. The town charm is now complete and ready to work, but there is one prohibition that must be scrupulously observed, — nothing tied in a bundle may enter the town, or the charm will become non-effective. Women returning with fire- wood must untie the bundle before reaching the "town charm " ; men with bundles of grass for thatching must untie them ; carriers with loads must loosen all the cords, or make a wide detour ; and people must remove their girdles and belts. No sacrifice is offered regularly to this charm, but, should something very bad happen to the town or people, they refresh, or renew the energies of, the charm by pouring some more blood over it. Sometimes the fetish post is placed in the centre of the town.

Sometimes a man will invest in a zumbi charm for his own exclusive use. The fee is so extravagantly large that only rich men can pay it, and hence the idea of its power to bring riches to its owner is fostered.

This zumbi charm is at times put into a fowl, a goat, or a pig, and such a fowl or animal is never sold or killed, and it is never stolen, as no one would dare to steal the fetish belonging to another. Male animals only are in- vested with the zumbi power, and, when the animal grows old, the power is transferred to another. There used to be found in the towns what were called nsusti a zumbi