Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/334

 2 6 Presidential Address.

idea of rebirth is definite. ^ It is said that the kriji or central personage of the Poro society eats or gives birth to the candidates, and it is noteworthy that washing forms part of the ceremonial of initiation. 'Another case in which there is some evidence of a ceremonial representation of rebirth is that of the Ndembo and Nkimba societies of the Lower Congo ^ where, after feigning death, the candidate receives a new name and has again to be taught his mother-tongue and has to learn who are his relatives, but in this case there is no evidence that water is used in the course of the initiatory rites. A rite more suggestive of a con- nection between water and rebirth is that of the Baya and other tribes of the Middle Congo. ^ In this ceremony the candidate is decoyed through a series of openings or traps in leafy arbours, from the last of which he falls into a river and is fished out half-drowned. In this and other cases we need more detailed evidence concerning the nature of the rites before we should be satisfied that they symbolise rebirth, but, on the other hand, it must be remembered that for obvious reasons it is very difficult to obtain such evidence where secret societies are concerned. We should be prepared for much more definite evidence of the idea and representation of rebirth which are little more than suggested by the scanty evidence available.

In Melanesia the ceremonial representation of death and of return to life forms a prominent feature of the process of initiation into the graded organisations usually called secret societies, but I do not know of any rites which can be regarded as directly symbolic of rebirth. The societies

1 N. W. Thomas, Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, art. " Secret Societies," vol. xi. p. 289.

2 J. H. Weeks, Among the Primitive Bakongo, London, 1914, pp. 158- 177.

3 Ch. Ducasse, La Geographie, t. xvii., 1908, p. 457 ; and A. E. Lenfant, La Decouverte des grandes sources dii centre de I'Afrique, Paris. 1909, p. 204.