Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/504

 462 The Congo Medicine-Man.

a saucepan of palm wine and presses into it the juice of nsangalavwa stems and elemba-lemba leaves. He then dips his hands into the mixture, and puts the palms of his wet hands to the forehead and back of the homicide's head, then to the temples, and then over all the joints of the body. This makes him olembamene (gentle, docile, careful). Should a hunter kill his dog, he must call this nganga and go through this ceremony, or next time he will kill a man. No one would hunt with him unless he observed this rite. In the same way the ngang^ a lembe operates upon the insane to render them docile, and to cure them of their madness.

16. Ngang' a siingii, — {sungu, violent death, — the war fetish). On the proclamation of war between the towns, a strong charm is made by this nganga}^

17. Ngarig' elejuba, — {lemba, to remove all evil spells), — provides means used to accomplish much the same object as No. 16.^^ No. 16 provides a charm to cause a violent death to the enemy, and No. 17 a protective charm from violent death by the enemy.

18. Ngang' a nkosi, — {nkosi, lion). This nganga' s fetish has the power of giving and curing chest complaints such as pneumonia, pleurisy, etc., and a person suffering from a disease of this kind goes to or sends for the ngang' a nkosi, who cuts a long, thin, exposed rootlet of a tree, and binds it tightly round the patient's chest. The ?iganga then searches for a bunch of palm nuts on a palm-tree that has never been cut before for palm nuts, and, having found the first fruits of the palm-tree, he takes some of the nuts and tears the oily fibre off with his teeth, — (a knife must not be used), — meanwhile walking round the palm- tree. Two of the nuts freed of their oily fibre are hung from the rootlet round the man's chest, — one near each breast, — and then the oil from the fibre is pressed out and mixed with palm wine and rubbed well into the patient's chest.

i^VoI. XX., p. 35. i^Vol. XX., p. 36.