Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/268

 258 Obeah in the West Indies.

or less connected with one or other of the two Vaudoux sects, — those who are content with the flesh and blood of white cocks and spotless white goats at their ceremonies, and those who are not only devoted to these, but on great occasions call for the flesh and blood of the " goat without horns," that is, a human victim, which was the highest sacrifice of the Vaudoux rites. Besides the goat and the cock the Vaudoux priests occasionally sacrificed a lamb. This idea, the author says, they have probably taken from the Catholic Church, — the paschal lamb. It is carefully washed, combed, and ornamented with bunches of blue ribands before being sacrificed.

When Haytt was still a French colony, Sir Spenser says, Vaudoux worship flourished, but there was no distinct mention of human sacrifies in the accounts that have been transmitted. But he gives from the account of a French writer, M. Moreau de St. Mery, a very graphic description of fetishism as it existed in his day (end of eighteenth century). After speaking of the dances which had been brought from Africa to the colony, amongst which was the " Vaudoux," known for a long time principally in the Haytian or western part of the island, he goes on to describe the cult or worship of the Vaudoux, which, according to the Arada negroes, — who are its true sectaries in the colony in the maintenance of its principles and rules, — signifies an all- powerful and supernatural being on whom depends all the events which take place in the world. This being is a non-venomous serpent, who only consents to communicate his powers and to prescribe his will through the organ of a grand priest whom the sectaries select, and still more by that of the negress whom the love of the latter has raised to the rank of high priestess. These two delegates bear the pompous names of King and Queen (Papa and Maman Roi, corrupted to " Papaloi " and " Mamanloi "). They are during their whole life the chiefs of the great family of the Vaudoux, and they have a right to the unlimited obedience