Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/505

 The Congo Medicine-Man. 463

19. Ngang' a lufivalakasi, (probably lufwa lua {n)kazi, from lufwa{fwa) death, lua of, Jikazi wife and husband).^^ The ceremony performed on a widower who has lost his first wife is as follows : — The bereaved husband sends for this nganga, who gives him a raw egg to swallow. The widower then enters his house, and for six days comes out at night only. He may only sleep on a palm basket, i.e. a basket made by plaiting two palm fronds together. At dawn on the seventh day the male relatives of the deceased woman arrive to escort him to a running stream, carrying his basket bed. On arrival at the stream one of the relatives takes the bed and throws it into the water, scrapes his tongue, shaves him, pares his nails, makes three small cuts on his arm, and finally immerses him three times in the river to wash away the death. The widower then returns to the town, and a cock and hen are killed and cooked, and are eaten by the relatives of the deceased, — the males eating the cock, and the females the hen. The greatest care must be taken not to break a single bone of either fowl. Palm wine is then drunk, and the bereaved is rubbed with oil and camwood powder. At sundown the bones of the fowls are collected and tied in a palm leaflet, and buried at the base of a young palm-tree. From those who are present the nganga selects the men and women who have never been bereaved of husband or wife, and these have to tread in the earth over the buried bones. Those who thus tread in the bones have a tabu put upon them that they are not to eat palm nuts or anything made from them until a child is born to each of them. To disregard this prohibition is to court a like bereavement. A pumpkin seed is added to the charm worn by the widower, and three fibre cloths dyed black are put about his waist, and thus all the evil spells are broken. The man need not wait a year or two as a widow does, but can marry as soon as the wife is buried and the above rites

^^ Vol. xix., p[). 431-2.