Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/33

Rh "The Sakuka is a stone: it is reddish, like a leprous macula. Its redness is like that of red pigment. It is in several fragments, perhaps five. There is quite a little heap of them. Sometimes a fragment is missing from its place at Navau. I myself have been at the burying ground when a piece was missing and have seen that it was so, Vasukeiyasi is the Taukei of it, Navau is his ground. Kaliova has also a vested right in it. He is leprous, but Vasukeiyasi is not. The latter is the priest of the stone; and he can, by performing functions in connection with it, move it to infect a person with leprosy and so bring about his death. It is a sort of Kaica (witchcraft). I don't know what the process is, or what ceremonials Vasukeiyasi goes through. There is no doubt about it. The thing is true. The stone is called the Vatu ni Sakuka. When I say the Sakuka marked our hearth I mean the demon of the stone, of which Vasukeiyasi is the actuator. I don't know the origin of it. It is an ancient institution. What I have told you is all that I know about it."

In the character of this leprous stone there may be seen a deviation from one at Vunavuga, which is its nearest neighbour. The site of the Wala stone is an old burial ground, and its genius, spoken of by Namaqa as "the Sakuka " can be material and ubiquitous. Though malign in effect, he is said to act more or less at the will of his priest or Taukei. Herein we have the ghost of a leprous ancestor being conjured up from his grave through the medium of the stone upon it, which becomes the temporary shrine or half-way-house of what appears to possess a corporeal but invisible form, and to be endowed with the power either of predicting or of determining the infection of a person with leprosy. I failed entirely, however, to gain any word as to the functions, if any, through which the Taukei of the Wala stone goes when he wishes to move the stone into action; and it seems most probable that "tacito mala vota susurro concipit." On my next