Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/499

 Pokomo Folklore. 461

ngadzi or friction-drum, which is never allowed to be seen except by the initiated, and never, under any circumstances, by women.

Concerning these grades I must await further information. As they begin in early childhood, (a man's father purchasing for him admission into the Makombe, Nchere, and Kundya in succession, before arranging his marriage), they would seem to correspond to age-classes. The fees for initiation into each successive grade are heavy, and, — as is said to be the case in Freemasonry, — the higher you go the more expensive the process becomes. The highest order, the Wakicho, have the right to levy contributions on the rest of the tribe, in cattle, goats, rice, honey-beer, etc., and the German missionaries are very severe on their aldermanic banquets, which one missionary designated by the graphic but untranslatable term fresserei. Herr Krafift's informant drew the distinction between the Wakicho and the VVagan- gana or sorcerers, that the former distribute their super- fluous property among the people of the village, which the latter never do. How this corporation of the sorcerers stands with regard to the Wakicho is one of the things I have not yet been able to enquire into.

The Buu tribe trace their descent from a man named Vere, a Melchizedek-like being without father or mother, who made his appearance in the district now occupied by the tribe at a period which I have as yet been unable to ascertain even approximately. But, as Mpongwa, the Government elder of Ngao, tells me that people were living on the coast when Vere came here, the mystery probably reduces itself to the not very recondite fact that he arrived here by himself and no one has ever heard anything about his belongings. He was unacquainted with the use of fire, -till shown how to make it with two sticks by one Mitso- tsozini, whose status and provenance are not yet clear to me ; he comes abruptly into the story (like " Miss Meadows ") as " his (Vere's) companion."