Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/533

 CORRESPONDENCE.

The SiwA in East Africa.

I am anxious to obtain information about the siwa in East Africa. All I know about it comes from Sir John Kirk, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., who is also responsible for the accompanying photographs. These will serve better than any verbal description to afford an adequate idea of the appearance of the siwa, and of the manner in which the instrument is used. Such a horn of state, to judge from the examples about to be cited, may be of ivory, metal, or wood ; is composed of three pieces, the two upper portions, which are jointed together and to the main portion, being purely decorative, while the main portion forms the horn itself; and is blown by means of a hole at the upper and smaller end, being held so that it curves across the chest, with the left hand grasping a knob underneath the hole, while the right hand takes hold of a chain (absent, however, in the wooden example) that runs downwards on the inside towards the mouth. Such a siwa is not a thing of yesterday, but probably goes back at least as far as the days of Persian (Shirazi) influence on the coast. It constitutes the symbol of authority belonging to the headman of a township, and its loss would seem to be equivalent to depriva- tion of power. Thus the siwa of Winde, a village on the main- land opposite the north end of Zanzibar, was confiscated by the Sultan's government in the seventies as a punishment for slave- trading. It is of wood, and is now in the possession of Sir John Kirk. Again, the siwa of Patte, an island to the north of Lamu inhabited by the Ea-Juni, a rather peculiar people, found also on the adjacent mainland, whose physique, to judge by the large handles of their weapons, differs sensibly from that of their more