Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/675

Rh The reason given for the presence of the tree was that in life, when men sit down on the ground, they usually want a support for the back. The nepong tree is for the souls to rest against when they come to drink the palm-wine and water provided for them.

Universally spread over the Bagam Area is the belief that it is possible for the ghosts (mizzing) of certain men to enter into the bodies of animals, such as elephants, leopards, buffaloes, monkeys, wild cats, owls, and so on. It is more usual for elephants and owls to be the animals selected, rather than leopards, as is the case on the coast. According to Striebel, one who is an elephant man must have in his possession a genuine elephant skin; the tusks may be fashioned out of hard wood. During sleep the ghost of the elephant man leaves him, takes the elephant skin, and with the wooden tusks in place he goes forth as a genuine elephant. He generally destroys cultivated patches or the maize fields of his enemies, and sometimes he kills man. On waking, the man whose shadow or ghost has entered the elephant realises what has happened, and stays in the hut until its return before he can rise from bed. If the elephant were killed, then in form it would appear to be exactly the same as any other elephant; its wooden tusks would be turned to ivory, and its flesh would taste the same as that of any other animal. In such an event the ghost or shadow, which has entered into the animal which has been killed, cannot return to the body of its former owner, and so the man speedily dies. It is believed that ghosts of all chiefs have the power to enter into elephants.

The ghosts of the Eghāp always have the power to influence animals. They understand their language, and consequently they maintain dominion over them. If anyone in Bagam has been the victim of theft he makes offerings