Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/503

 Some Notes on East Africati Folklore. 469

Waalimn lifted up their hands to heaven and prayed God to let them die and not fall into the hands of those heathen ; and their prayer was heard, and the whole town over- whelmed with sand, so that the raiders, when they came again, found no trace of it.

Stories of buried treasure seem as popular here as else- where in the East. The headman of Ngomeni, before conducting me over the ruins already referred to, asked me to promise that I would not carry anything away — a promise, I may add, which involved no superhuman degree of self-control. A soldier who came to Ngomeni collect- ing ta.xes for Said Barghash once found a gold Iciiioo (whet- stone) among the ruins, and carried it off to Mambrui as a present to his superior officer. On the way, his arm became paralysed, and he was seized with a trembling, but he dis- regarded the warning, and, on reaching his house, went indoors and lay down on his bed, throwing the stone down on the floor. At the time of isha prayers, his wife went to call him, and found that he was dead — and the whetstone had disappeared, — as all treasures do when thus carried off; even if you put them into a box and lock it, they will be gone next time you open it. Mwana Somoye, my informant, knew this unfortunate man, and likewise his wife, who, from the day of her husband's death, was afflicted, as long as she lived, with a palsied trembling and likewise subject to nightmares, starting and crying " Hau ! hau ! " in her sleep ; and she was ultimately seized and killed by a lion. Whether, or how far, she was supposed to be a partaker in the deceased's impiety did not appear.

I thought at Mambrui I had got hold of an authentic ghost-story, which was attached to the Kadhi's office (locally called the barasa) — or rather to the lock-up con- tiguous to it. This lock-up is supposed to be haunted by Mashetani, who are both heard and seen, appearing either as men or as white draperies. A Kikuyu, who had been arrested on a charge of stabbing a man and