Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/157

 Reviews. 135

traditions of the neighbouring and kindred Banyoro. Before we can reach sound conclusions on the history of the one people, that of the other must also be closely studied. Meanwhile it may be said that of none of the details of the pedigree, as set forth on pp. 175-180 and 231, further back than the lifetime of Mr. Roscoe's authorities or perhaps a generation earlier, can we be reasonably sure. It would be very desirable to know how the pedigree itself was obtained, whether from one witness or piece- meal from several, whether they were confronted together, how far they agreed, to what clans they belonged, and so forth. Mr. Roscoe has merely given us the net results of his enquiries, (which differ in many points from those of other writers), in the form he has judged most authentic. But upon the face of it there is reason for suspicion of the really historical character of the genealogy. The present method of naming a child is for the grandmother to recite the names of her son's deceased ancestors over it until it laughs. The name at which it laughs is that of the ghost who will be its guardian, and that name is adopted (p. 64). But beginning from Magembe, the fourth in descent from Kintu, in the genealogy the name of the child (if a boy) is as a rule his mother's name deprived of the feminine prefix, or rather the mother's name is that of the child with a feminine prefix. This rule obtains (though not without some exceptions) down to Kekulwe, who is said to have been the twenty-first king and to have lived eight generations before the reigning monarch. There is no mention of teknonymy; and even in teknonymy the mother's name would not be compounded of the son's name with a merely feminine prefix.

The Baganda worshipped a number of gods, as well as the ghosts of departed relatives, to say nothing of their veneration of fetishes. These are to be distinguished from amulets. Like the latter the fetishes were innumerable, but they seem to have been regarded as more powerful. They were made only by the most skilled medicine-men. Many, if not all of them, bore names ; and by means of a special ceremony they became possessed by various gods, though they do not seem to have been themselves regarded as personal beings. This quasi-personal character of fetishes has been analysed with much acumen as it is found among the peoples