Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/682

372 his right hand and ashes in his left, and he was instructed to say that in the home of the dead he had been a priest, to which office he had been appointed by the souls of the departed Eghāp. He asked the head-chief to desist from asking questions about it, as unless he did, he would die. After the head-chief had been told this, palm-wine, fowls, goats, etc., were brought and given to the priest of the souls as offerings to them. With all these offerings he returned through the water to the home of the dead and remained there.

(n) A man came late to his compound after a dance. As he was eating some food another man appeared before the table and snatched it away. The man was frightened and cried out so loudly that his wife was wakened. Asked for an explanation, the man related what had happened, and his wife said that it had been a ghost. In two days the man was dead.

(o) Several women on their way home from the farms found in a stream a small child, who asked them to carry it across the water. All of them disregarded this request and went their way, with the exception of one of the head-chief's women, who took notice of it and carried it over. On the other side she was about to put the child down, but it clamoured to be taken on. It was then fastened to her back in the usual manner and carried home, but there the child refused to be put down, and the woman had to carry it all the time on her back. At last, in desperation she threw it back into the water, and it immediately swam across to the other side, while the woman herself was drowned.

(p) In the compound of the sub-chief of Bamendjing there is a hut in which lived the ghost of one of his former wives. If anyone passing the hut called out, "What are you doing in the hut?" the ghost would come out and beat the questioner with one of her long breasts, and immediately he would die.

(q) In one of the Bagam compounds a ghost is on watch