Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/676

366 to his ancestors and asks them to avenge him. The ghosts send animals in the form of lions or leopards to kill the thief, or else the ghosts themselves enter into animals in order to see that he is killed. It is regarded generally as the penalty for some wrongdoing against a neighbour, when a man has been killed by such animals.

A woman had a quantity of corn broken from the cobs in her hut. A large proportion was destroyed by a number of rats, and naturally the woman was very angry. She related the occurrence to her friends, and the rats heard about this, and said to her: "Would you rather we killed your relatives or ate your corn?" The woman was greatly frightened and could not answer. That same day all her relatives died, and in a few days she also was dead.

A man went to the Nun River to shoot a crocodile. In the early morning he saw one, and was about to fire at it, when it came up to him, and holding the gun fast said: "Why are you going to shoot me?" Immediately the man fell dead. In both these instances it was believed that these animals contained the ghosts of former inhabitants of Bagam.

A story is related by Striebel of two men who went one day into the bush and there entered into two elephants in order to destroy some cornfields. Another man paid a visit to his cornfield and saw the elephants there. He crept into the tall grass and hid himself. After a short time the ghosts who had entered into the elephants left them, and returned to the men. The skins and wooden tusks of the animals were laid by. The two men then went to the top of a neighbouring hill, and as soon as they had disappeared the man who was hiding went to the elephant skins and placed two stalks of elephant-grass (mbere) over them. They were tied at the top, and a small bundle of grass was attached to the place where they were tied. He then returned to his hiding-place in the grass. When the two men returned from the walk they saw this grass and were