Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/342

312 of the ear of the sheep had been strung with some beads and tied round her ankle, and the spirit had departed from her. A similar device was used by a village chief named Achol, who had been imprisoned by the reigning king, the twenty-fifth since Dag. When released he was treated just as though he had been possessed by the spirit of a dead king; a sheep was killed and friends brought him bead anklets on which pieces of the ear of the sheep were strung. Achol wore these anklets to protect him from the wrath of the reigning sovereign.

I know little of the Shir religion, but one day visiting a Shir village my husband became indisposed; so the "medicine-man" by means of two small pieces of leather divined the cause of the illness. He said the spirits within the patient were strong, they were those of his mother and grandmother. He advised us to return to our village and propitiate the spirits by the sacrifice of two sheep, of which neither my husband nor I must eat any part.

Among the Baganda ghosts are honoured, shrines are built for them near the graves. "The majority of ghosts were beneficent and assisted the members of the clan to which they belonged. … The medicine man by consulting the oracle could tell people which ghost was causing them trouble. … Both men and women were liable to become possessed by ghosts. The form which possession took was generally a wasting sickness or a mild form of insanity; in such cases the medicine man would be called in to exorcise the ghost by incantations and by making the sick person inhale the smoke of certain drugs which were burned by the bedside, and which soon dislodged the ghosts. … Though ghosts were frequently thought to cause trouble, they were supposed to render help to the members of the clan to which they belonged, if they were treated well. A chief or wealthy person would occasionally make a feast for the ghost of a relative, killing some animal at the shrine and then