CHAPTER VII

INITIATION
Sacred Enclosures — Rounding up the Novices — Society " Death " — Society "Resurrection " — Adult Initiation — Circumcision and Excision — Vows of Allegiance.
The initiation of members usually takes place in a "bush school" or "puberty school" held in a " sacred enclosure " in the bush.
These " schools " or " retreats " may be held annually or at periods varying from three years to seven. They differ in duration, that of Butwa being three weeks ; Egbo, a lunar month ; Bori, forty days ; Org and Poro, three months ; Bundu and Okonko, also Ndembo, three to six months, and Nkimba and others more than six months.
Other business than initiation may be overtaken during the retreats, especially that of the elections of officers and grade promotions.
SACRED ENCLOSURES
The temporary headquarters are bush villages erected by the officials and graduates for purposes of " retreat."
These villages are carefully built and cleverly
concealed. Prickly acacia or a-giraffce, camel thorn,
or etanke, elephant grass, may form a wall about
them ; or they may be left un-walled, but fence or
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no fence the village remains inviolate from the uninitiated. They are " sacred." All-powerful tabu is their sufficient guard.
Their erection causes little or no comment in the chosen district, in fact, their presence is ignored, or a pretence to that effect is kept up. No one will willingly discuss them, and, if the local inhabitants are pressed to explain their presence, a shrug and a gesture will be the only reply. You can never get a BuTWA initiate to say he has attended any gathering within them, and, although they have been built within sight, or hearing, of his own house, he will speak and behave as if he had never been near nor intended to do so, and as if he knew neither their appearance nor their purpose.
If the traveller does not wish to insult the
places these people consider ' holy ' he will accept the an- swer, and choose a fresh topic of conversation. If he is one of those who refuse to turn aside without inspecting all that attracts his attention he should, at least, re- member that good manners are as de-
Poro " Kana " containing hidden en- sirable when visiting trance and guarded by a masked sentry. ■(■}^£ holv places of
primitive peoples in the wilderness, as in visiting a cemetery or a cathedral of his own land.
One path alone is used for access to the sacred enclosure, and only those sure of their welcome use that path. Somewhere across it is a gate, or a
A SI'MO SACRED I'LACE.
INITIATION 109
series of gates, guarded by alert graduates and minor officials, most of them armed ; the " police " of the societies.
The gates, as well as the path, are works of care and time and a great deal of skill. The outer gate of PoRO is known as a kana. It is a great palm-frond screen built up against dense bush foliage, and embellished by flowering creeper and branch of blossoming bush. Within it is the tiny kamela opening, through which all entering must grope their way. That of Ndembo, called mpanzu, is a tribute to the patience and skill of the Bakongo weavers, and that of Nkimba is of woven fabric gaudily painted. Invariably these gates face east, as do most African house-doors.
Inside the gate is a little space, where stand some of the inner guards. Here matters of un- certainty may be decided by officials, for passwords are tricky things at best of times, and when they are frequently changed they may become as difficult for the sentry as for the initiate to remember. And some of the societies, as do the Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania, change their passwords and code of signals at each meeting and at each retreat.
PoRo asks riddles as passwords, such as " Could you root up a palm-tree with your hands ? " and " Can a basket hold water ? " The sentinels of Andomba and Ebere sing a strain of a song, omitting some line that the applicant for admission must supply. Or there may be a " missing word " test, a sentence repeated lacking certain words that must be at once supplied. Or a posy of flowers must be presented, the bunch containing none but the requisite blossoms. An Afa elaboration of this is a bunch of blossoms, each representing a word, that spells a sentence spoken by an official, and Iban-Isong demands from its members a particular blossom that completes a flower-sentence known to
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the officials. Members of Kinki have to bring to the retreat some article for the completion of the ingredients of a secret package in the keeping of the Head, and a variation of this is found in the applicant having to name the contents of a bundle held before him. Ampora uses bits of sticks, held half-hidden in an official hand, the test being the declaration of their number, or by saying how many are shorter than the others.
On the further side of the first gate begins the " sacred way," a path of twists and turns, tunnels and cul-de-sacs, such as are only known to experienced African maze-makers. Those walking along that way do so at their own risk. They must go warily,
here crawling through darkness made by woven walls, there having to choose between several turnings, and again, be- ing reduced to diligent and often painful search for secret guiding signs observable only to the elect. They may also have to pass several guarded gates. Poro builds four along its sacred way. Visitors cer- tainly will have to pass worrying and menacing things. There are trip- ping things, tearing things, choking things, frightening and terrible things along that path.
The pilgrim passes through avenues of symbolic figures. These may be the ceremonial masks, to which he has grown accustomed, mounted on sticks or piled stones. But there will be others, ingenious constructions for which the wit and wisdom of the
The Snake Tree.
INITIATION
III
officials have been responsible. Clay acroliths, moulded about wooden frames, of deities, mostly ill-disposed towards humans according to their looks, and of other awe-inspiring denizens of worlds beyond the knowledge of ordinary men. Clay dragons and unicorns, or snakes and crocodiles. Serpents of piridigi creeper (that so resembles python that many an unwary traveller has, at sight of it, been shocked into flight) and branch of snake-tree, each one so fashioned and poised as to be absolutely true to life. Also crouching leopards and kindred ravenous beasts, lurking in the gloomiest patches of the bush, add their quota of terror to that of all the rest.
The site of the village itself is prob- ably determined by utilitarian necessities, but it may be built about some tree re- garded with reverence in the district. These " sacred trees " are not objects of worship.
They are, for some reason best known to the local people, fetish trees, that is, trees considered suitable as the repositories of fetish objects. Thus has the Afri- can solved the problem of what to do with the fetishes of his dead. He puts some on the grave or in it, and the rest he hangs upon a sacred tree. The tree so used may be aloe or baobab, blood-plum {hcema- tostaphia barteri), kapok, tamarind or any other. There is no virtue in the tree itself. Or it may be some growth conspicuous as a freak, like that barren oil palm at Pa Lokko in Sierra Leone (Waterloo
The Pa Lokko Palm.
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district) that thrusts upward, instead of the orthodox single stem, eight stalwart branches, that break from the trunk about six feet above the ground. Around some such trees as these the village may be built (the palm just mentioned has been put to this use by the Koya members of Poro), and at its foot will be placed a miniature hut for the keeping of the sacred possessions of the society during the retreat.
In appearance the village is one of booths, as were those built by the Jews during the Feast of Tabernacles. In the midst stands the temporary council house, sometimes built with the central tree as its kingpost and sometimes beneath its shade but self-supporting. The kamehra of Poro is large and carefully erected. In some districts its walls are open arcades, in others thickly woven lattice- work. The thatch rests upon palm and bamboo that are left higher than the walls, thus leaving high window-spaces. Inside are benches for the council- lors and the officials, each seat having behind it a wooden effigy of some famous past member, or that of the society's guardian deity. Over the raised seat of the Grand Tasso is a shelf whereon rests, what time he is not wearing it, the skull-piled tanga-tanga. Before that seat is a space known as the " Place of Refuge," a stone-encircled spot where rest the divination stones and other objects used in the celebrations.
That of Egbo has upon its walls chips of wood, each, although without name or identification mark, a memorial to the dead. The spirit-tablets of the Chinese were inscribed, and the waxen images of the Romans were supposed to have borne some likeness to those in whose honourable memory they were made, but neither of those memorials, no matter how carefully inscribed or how skilfully made, can have meant more to the man of China or Rome than do these fragments of bark to the man of Africa. Some
INITIATION 113
are decorated with drawings and furnished with models of birds, beasts and reptiles, drawn, shaped and painted with real skill.
Around the council house stand the huts erected for the accommodation of the visiting councillors and the resident officials. Beyond these are those for the graduates who have joined the retreat, and outside all are the huts for the novices. The buildings may be in groups with wide spaces between, some- times each group fenced. The etiquette of society precedence and prestige is thus satisfied. Messages are passed from one group to another with all the slow and solemn dignity of a royal progress. If, for instance, the Grand Tasso delivers a judgment in the council house, it is repeated by the Messenger to the councillors present, who authorise its issue to the camp. It is then communicated to the re- presentatives of Binima, the senior grade, and from them to the Missi, and from them to the Wujanga, and so down the grades until it reaches the ears of the Taya or Novices.
The " novice huts " vary in shape and material. Some are so small that the single inmate has diffi- culty of movement within them. In some the in- mates are actually bound to the huts, having to carry them with them every time they take a walk. Some of those built for the girls have the floors raised above the ground. They may be of the roughest kind, hastily erected, or made with care, decorated with flowers and carpeted with leaves or aromatic herbs. The nzo a toko for the boys and the nzo a mbongi for the girls of the Bakongo are raised conical huts like pigeon houses, with a pointed roof and a ladder to reach the entrance. The Ndembo vela or lodges are of bamboo, woven in intricate pattern and elaborate design, and so well executed that they might be placed as garden arbours about an English lawn.
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They may be built in rows, terrace-fashion, or in lines of cubicles like those used by the bathers as dressing-rooms ; like the birth-houses used in the cult of the Child-God of Egypt, or they may be dropped down on the edges of the enclosure without scheme or plan. They may be surrounded by mud or thorn walls, each hut singly, or the group so confined. But in most cases they are made so as to exclude all light. Some are guarded day and night by a sentry. He (or she) may take charge of a group or there may be a sentry for each hut. Those for the girls are often aged women.
One part of the area of the enclosure is sacred to the Head of the society. The narrow path that connects his house to the council hall is never trodden by other foot than his. When he moves along it his coming is heralded by noise of drum, shrill whistle or by the tinkling of the bells he wears. Then, in the following silence, all throw themselves face to ground and remain prostrate until he has entered the council chamber and seated himself.
The period of retreat over, the village is burned. This is done with " new fire not fanned by human breath," which generally means by a flame caused by friction. When the Ndembo enclosure is burned, the Lubzviku official is ceremoniously tied to the kingpost of the council house. He escapes the flames by virtue of the powers of which he is the honoured custodian.
After every vestige of the village has been care- fully destroyed, the site is the perquisite of some selected member, who reaps one harvest from its hallowed soil before it again lapses into bush.
ROUNDING UP THE NOVICES
Early one morning an official, the Champion, the Herald or the Messenger, enters the village to
INITIATION 115
collect the youths or maidens who await initiation.
The masked messenger of Penda-Penda and his servants enter at daybreak, crying unknown words, in which Juga-Nkah, the name of their Head, is often repeated. Arrived at the houses they seize some one, generally an old man long a member of the society, who is prepared for and awaiting this act, and carry him off to the bush. After some hours a human nail or a strand of hair, said to belong to the old man, is brought into the village and ex- hibited. The people crowd to see it, lamenting the loss of their aged friend, their cries of fear and alarm well simulated, for these folk would never dream of spoiling so good a show. The masked men again withdraw, appearing again about sundown, this time carrying a bundle upon a pole. They deposit their burden in the midst of the village, and proceed to plant the pole upright in the ground. That is the first act of this drama of Penda-Penda Death. The next manifests how they can resurrect the dead.
A great crowd throngs about the bundle, from which, after incantations by the officials, emerges the old man, alive and very garrulous of his real or fictitious experiences in the bush that day. Forthwith he starts to help the society men round up the novices.
Strings are attached to the pole, and the youths, who have obeyed orders and gone into hiding, are caught and tied by the neck to these strings. They act their part of unwillingness very well. When all are tied up they are made to dance, to gallop fantastically within their confined circle, to turn and twist, backwards and forwards, until the strings are inextricably mixed and shortened, and the youths are half-suspended and half-choked. Still they are urged to movement, by the voice of en- couragement of their friends and by stroke of wand,
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a length of vine in the hand of an official, until the lads are insensible to either compliment or punish- ment. Then they are cut adrift and, the strings still about their necks, carried away into the bush. They are now dead to their old life and all it has meant to them.
SOCIETY " DEATH "
Ndembo neophytes drop as if dead somewhere west of the sacred enclosure and wait until masked men come to carry them to the new village. Their " death " is made to seem the more real by shouts being raised as if of pain, and by the beating of heavy sticks upon the ground. Everyone within hearing is impressed. They lament and mourn, telling each other their sons are dead. They go through the darkness to that " dread " spot, and there around the pools of goat's blood carefully left by the officials they raise the sorrowful cry of the bereaved. Ndembo Death is taken very literally. Later that night the officials will parade the village carrying pieces of the goat-flesh, and declaring that it is the flesh of the youths who have been taken away.
Nkimba candidates are drugged, the work of the medicine being helped by " spinning," a swift turning about of the boy until he falls unconscious. BuTWA youths drink malawa, a special society brew of highly intoxicating beer, and then are made to dance until with alcohol and excitement they become unconscious.
A YAK A officials cooee from the bush to announce their coming, the cry being repeated at intervals until answered by like calls that appear to come from every part of the forest. Then they creep from their hiding and range themselves under the trees nearest the village, there to wait until the blood- curdling moanings of the society's bull-roarer is
INITIATION 117
heard. At the sound all the villagers hide them- selves, and all fires and house lights are covered. The officials march forth, silently, for are they not " visiting spirits " ? and are there not society penal- ties prescribed against a word being heard or a laugh being raised, or even a cough ? In the darkness and in the silence the youths are taken, and soundly beaten, and, insensible from pain and terror, carried away.
KuFONG clash knives as they dance madly about the novice, pretending to strike at him until he swoons from fright.
They are carried away feet first, as a corpse is carried. Kongcorong smears the neck with the blood of a fowl in pretence of a cut throat. A fa, BuTWA, DuBAiA, Eyo, Kangar, Mungi, and Naferi smear blood on the body, in pretence that the heart has been taken out. Poro compels the taking of tchlang, a snuff, torma, a herb to chew, and boruma, a medicine to drink, so that spirit, mind and body may all be slain. Bundu whiten the body with chalk and Nkamba with pipe-clay, that the appearance of death may be complete. Bori shaves its boys and plucks the hair of its girls. Most of the women's societies tease out the pubic hair of their novices.
They are kept drugged, in some instances, several days. Those of Ndembo are laid on a raised platform in the enclosure, nude, to " dry in the sun." They are so kept from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon, for some days. They lie on their backs with a palm-kernel set on the stomach. They are turned over once a day, and the kernel put on the nape of the neck.
They are dead. The dead are buried. So Ayaka rolls them in the dirt, then makes them lie rigid whilst the officials tread them down. Kufong bury in sand and earth. Others in the body of a dragon. Poro in the belly of the presiding deity of the society,
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the bodies of the youths showing the marks from the teeth of the mouth through which they were swallowed. Nkanda buries them in filth.
The dead decompose. Of the Ndembo youth nothing is left save a single bone. Mukanda claim to rob them of their shadows, to show they now have neither life nor body.
But the spirits are left. They are now after- death spirits. From the drugged stupor the novices wake dully, to find themselves in a realm so strange that even the stories they heard during their village life cannot explain it. Frightened by unknown surroundings, lethargic through strange medicines, their bodies aching with unusual fatigue, without knowledge of the passing hours, penned and shackled, it is easy for these youths and maidens to believe they are now in the kingdom of the spirits. The dimness or total darkness, the new language they hear spoken, the strange " voices " of drum or flute or bull-roarer, all seem unearthly. The raised floors and confined space of their huts, the alarming noises that sound out close to their ears (through cleverly concealed speaking tubes of bamboo or by ventrilo- quism), the purgatives of kino, the gum of the fterocarpus erinaceus, and others made from ancient recipes known to the officials, or the emmenagogues of oil of olives, all confuse and bewilder, and keep them wondering. Bruised and sore, and frightened, they huddle in the darkness, their only food medicines or dirty bones. This last infliction, a part of the ceremony of azvlupulu maw (eating dirt off the teeth of the spirit) of A yak a, is followed by the noise of fighting. The bad deities, they are told, are trying to get them. And, alas, they succeed. The flimsy huts are smashed in by tearing, raging strength, and the cowering youths are pushed and pulled and pummelled until they actually believe that those ferocious deities have stolen certain of their organs,
INITIATION 119
and are devouring the same amidst howls and screeches and demoniacal glee.
SOCIETY "RESURRECTION"
The day of their " resurrection " comes at last It is a great day, a day of feasting, of gladness and sunshine.
It is often determined by augury, and, once fixed, can only be altered by the death of a prominent official. It may have to do with harvest, as in Orisha, or it may be the middle day between winter and summer, as in Poro, or " the day of the change of wind in the dry season," as in Gelede, or the day when the sun is in " his middle house " (at or near the Equinox), as in Org.
It is the day of the real opening of the retreat and puberty school, when the graduates arrive who desire a " refresher " course before taking up the responsibilities of a higher grade.
The novices are carried, shrouded in mats or twigs, to the open space near the council house, where the ceremony of the resurrection takes place. It is, in Ampora, the " child-bed," the place where the babes are born. Egugu means " risen from the dead," and an official of Nkimba is Nyanga, the New Life. Here the solitary bone of Ndembo becomes a new body. The Kufong youth is drawn from his mound of sand and earth by the shoulders. The Ayaka youth is lifted upon a stretched cord. He is bHndfolded, and the hands that support him have bones tied to their palms to tell of skeleton assistance. He must cross the narrow strand, as the mazos, the spirits of the dead, cross on a thread the wide river that separates the worlds. More than that he must do. On the other side of that river is a tunnel through which the after-death spirits must
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pass before they can come again into sunshine. It is not a tunnel through the earth, but one through the body of an insect, the tiny insect ahwissi. This cannot be done without training and fatigue. There- fore many times the youth has to crawl through ever more constricted holes, until he believes he is at last safely through the body of ahwissi itself.
Old things have now passed away and all things have become new. The clothes in which the novices entered the enclosure are now dramatically burned ; dragged round with derisive shout, gesture and taunt, and thrust deep into the heart of the flames.
They are cleansed, oiled, painted, clothed. Ndembo boys are coated with red ochre, and Butwa boys with zebra-like stripes. Others with arnetto red or powdered camwood. Yassi girls are spotted from head to foot with round discs of coloured washes. Nkanda wash and oil, and Kufong bathes the eyes of the boys with to-puey, a lotion made from the bark of the cork tree, musanga smithii.
Chibados supplies a gown of rapphia, and Nkimba a crinoline of palm-frondlets. Poro a corset of twisted fern-rope and a short skirt. These two last dresses are put on boys. Yassi has a garment of cotton that fits skin-tight from waist to thigh. Nkanda boys wear nothing but a large wooden comb that is thrust through the hair upside down, the thick decorated part forming a mask over their eyes.
ADULT INITIATION
The societies who recruit their memberships from adults have their own rites of initiation.
Those of Adamu are conducted at night and in a darkened hut. The oaths taken by the men are said to differ from those demanded from the women. An Andomba novice is kept " buried " for twenty-
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four hours, and is " blooded " on resurrection. The Banban adult novices pass through a long probation, disappearing into the bush for certain periods, where they are taught further secrets of the society. The Ebere applicants are said to suffer severe beating before being admitted. Those of Ekkpo-Njawhaw, both men and women, " die " during the initial rite, and those of Epe are said to drink their own blood before taking the first vow of allegiance. The Gelede novices are forced to undergo humiliating ceremonies, and those of Ndito-Iban and Iban-Isong pass through " purifications " that leave them for a time drenched of all vitality of mind as well as of body. Idiong, an aristocratic Nigerian society, difficult of entry, is said to make compulsory probational ceremonies last a full twelve months, and Mborko, another exclusive association, demands obedience to ordeals, lasting some months, that are so strenuous as to cause some of the applicants to become invalids for a time. Ikung and Kwaga, one Pagan and the other only partly so, are alike in having initiatory cere- monies that suggest comparison with some of the rites of the ancient Egyptian birth-cults, as do also some of those of the Temne women's Kinki.
Those of Malanda and Bili can be more ex- tensively described. The candidate of the first is introduced to the society's officials by a member, or members, who acts during the initiation as " guard- ian." There is a period of insensibility, induced by a secret medicine, from which the candidate wakes to take, whilst still dazed by the effects of the drug, the first oaths, and to make the first payments. These last include a goat, which is killed, and the blood, mixed with unguents, rubbed into the skin of the candidate. There are seven rites performed, seven vows taken, the initiation lasts seven days, and the first degree must be served seven years. The men or women candidates of Bili spend some
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time in the council house, to which their food is brought by relatives, who place it outside the house and cover it with big leaves, the purple underside uppermost. The retreat may last two or three weeks, most of the time spent in rites and ordeals, the first including several purifications and the last including the blowing of whistles, the eating of the raw heart of a chicken, beating, tightening a twisted vine-rope about the loins, and being held in the flames of a fire. In the ordeal of eating the chicken heart, which is placed on a stick that is planted m the ground, the hands of the candidate are tied behind his back and he kneels to eat, but is pulled away several times by the officials as his mouth nears it before being allowed to make the meal. It is said that a rare slug, nanjonanjo, is also eaten. The society medicine, dazvdy plays a considerable part in the proceedings. The after life of the members is subjected to many exactions by the officials; the Head, called the Father of the Forest, being pro- pitiated by a present at all important events, such as harvesting fruit, building a house, marriage and childbirth. On returning home, the new members are covered by a mat, and all meeting them on the journey must make a present of an arrow.
CIRCUMCISION AND EXCISION
The rite of circumcision of the boys and the excision of the girls is conducted in most puberty schools some time after initiation. The rite has been known in Africa for more than five thousand years. Its original reason is either not known or has been forgotten. The custom of a few societies, Ndembo, Nda, Nimm, by offering the parts taken away as sacri- ficial gifts to the gods of fertility, may suggest that in some parts of the West Coast it had once a phallic
>IANXEKEH CIKCUMCISIOX MASK,
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significance. Other societies may use it as a primitive aid to cleanliness and as a preparation for the con- nubial state, an introduction to the full prerogatives of manhood and womanhood.
It still has a great hold upon the peoples of the Coast. Youths belonging to societies not practis- ing it have been known to undergo the rite with the novices of a strange and distant society, and women, sometimes advanced in years, have come from far distances to submit to the operation, for it is still true that one of the most villifying terms that can possibly be used to a woman is to reproach her with the want of it.
Amongst the societies on the West Coast it is rarely performed at any other age than that of puberty.
Preliminary to the performance of it, most of the societies demand the completion of the rite of Formal Forgiveness and the rite of Formal Cleans- ing.
The Ceremony of the Formal Forgiveness is one in which the parents of the novice assist, for only after they have declared their forgiveness can the Head, or the Deputy-Head, receive the confession and give absolution. In Bori and other Muham- medan societies the murid, neophyte or seeker, makes an initial 'ahd or covenant, in which he declares he repents of his past sins and will refrain in the future from committing them. The Ogboni boy appears before the council, which, after interrogation, grants him a collective forgiveness. In other societies the Head or his Deputy grants this priestly concession.
It is widely believed that the rite of circumcision would not be successful if confession of sin was not made and forgiveness granted.
Then follows the Ceremony of the Formal Cleans- ing. This may be a baptism of complete immersion in, wherever possible, running water, or a sprinkling
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with a few drops from a calabash. In the cases where immersion is enforced, the water may be carefully- rubbed from the body of the candidate by the hands of an official, in a stroking movement down- wards from the head, like that practised by a devout Brahmin.
The actual day for the rite of circumcision or excision varies. It may be three or seven or nine days after the opening of the school, or it may be a " fortunate " day fixed by the astrologers.
Guardians, mostly maternal uncles for the boys and paternal aunts for the girls, are appointed to assist at the ceremony, sometimes one to each candidate and sometimes one, or more, to a group of candidates. They are chosen also from councillors and senior grade members. They are supposed to inculcate courage into those undergoing the rite. They are also held responsible for the cleanliness of the patient. At the actual operation they hold the candidate's hands or give him (or her) support in whatever way it may be needed.
On the morning of the appointed day the boys and girls may be bathed and anointed with aromatic gums (acacia or asli, the African frankincense) or some unguent considered right by the " doctor " official, and may also be given cathartic medicines of aloes and kindred drugs.
The Oyeni boys have their hands and feet dyed with henna, and are clothed in white caps decorated with yellow designs and tassels and scraps of coloured muslin and paper, also the white gallabiyeh, one of the oldest garments of the world.
Then, with larking and leaping, and much pre- tence of rejoicing, they march to where the operators await them. In some instances they are carried on the backs of their guardians.
When the ceremony is a religious one, the novices may be taught to pray, *' O spirit of the fearless,
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help me to be brave without boasting : O spirit of the strong, help me to endure : 0 spirit of the warrior, help me to bear pain without flinching," or " O spirit of my grandfather, thou wert initiated here : listen to me and answer me, for to-day I also must be initiated, I also must suffer the pain of circumcision : I pray thee help me and guide me through the rite, that it may be successful." The officials and tutors and guardians may join in this prayer, " O spirits of our fathers, we appeal to thee : our fathers knew this pain : this pain is of old : help these thy success- ors to bear it : help them to be strong : help them to be brave : O spirits of our father, hear our appeal to thee." And away in the village the parents will be, at exactly the same hour, making their petitions for the strengthening of those undergoing the rite, the small brothers and sisters being gathered to swell the group of the prayer-makers, the babies being adorned with wreaths in honour of so important an occasion.
Other and less spiritual aids to bravery, and there- fore the more appealing to young minds, are known ; anklets and wristlets of approved creepers, often bearing small fetish objects warranted to deaden pain ; the boys wearing them on the right side and the girls on the left. These are the gifts of parents and guardians. The Muhammedan boys wear amulets on their foreheads, phylactery fashion.
The actual operation is by sub-incision, intro- cision, or the triple-cut. The instrument used may be the tightened hair of elephant or wildebeast or the saw-like claw of a large caterpillar, or knives ranging from those of the Stone Age to those of modern Sheffield make. The Poro operators, Betieli and Ayunkoli, use a blacksmith's knife in a single sweeping cut for a small boy and two for one of larger growth. The Nkimba Eseka uses a modern lancet in a quick, skilful, circular amputation. To
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these, and others like them, the operation is one of the utmost simplicity. They have a knowledge of surgery, as is proven by their after-treatment of the wound. But to others, like the Ndembo Lubwiku and the Nda Elongo, it is a matter of elaborate and impressive ceremonial. The moment must be astrologically fortunate, the moon must be at full or showing its first pale sickle, there must be a magic circle, the patient must be facing some particular point of the compass, and during the cutting there must be, Jewish-fashion, the muttering of an endless benediction. Also the prepuce, instead of being carelessly thrown away, must be tied care- fully in some portion of the boy's garment, or buried at a certain hour of the night ; covered with leaves from selected trees, or rendered harmless to the late owner by being given to some bird or beast to eat, the while incantations and prayers are in- dustriously continued.
Excision may be simple clitorectomy or may be accompanied by vaginal rupture performed by an official or by an onanistic deflator. Many women believe that if it is not performed child-bearing is impossible.
Great skill is shown in the making of healing ointments from animal fats and herbs, from juice extracted from creepers, berries and fruits like the banana. Etili and other medicinal leaves are used as poultices, supported by a palm midrib tied between the legs. Steam baths are used, that of Nkanda being the vapour from roasted hard-skin beans. These are placed in a hole about eighteen inches deep in the ground, over which the boy lies for a time. Grass-stem ash is then applied. Washing is not usually allowed until the sixth or seventh day.
Special fees are paid to the operators, blue pipe beads and fowls or brass rods being among the common payments. Both the operators and their
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patients may be masked, and when this is so the masks of the boys, as in Poro and Mannekeh, are ancient wooden caricatures of after-death spirits. The operation is customarily held in the bush, but the Ayenge of Bori is allowed to perform it in special cases in his own home. In Ampora the first boy to undergo the rite is called Batakoo, and is made responsible for the good conduct of his com- panions ; the last is Titkabati (amongst the Mende members), who is the fag of the camp.
VOWS OF ALLEGIANCE
Sometime during the early days of the puberty school the first vows of allegiance to the society are taken. These are often the occasion of much ceremony.
The vows are pledges of faithfulness and promises to keep the secrets no matter what the inducement may be to divulge them. They are made on the sacred, or the most sacred, possession of the society. The penalty for breaking them, that used to be death, is variable according to the power of the fetish ; it may be a threat of crippling, as in Butwa, or that of madness, as in Mungi, or that of sickness or loss of money or property.
At the ceremony white or black (or both) cloths may be tied about the stem of the sacred tree, and white or black goats and white, black or red fowls slaughtered. (The significance of these colours, and that of blue, in these religious rites has not yet been satisfactorily explained.) The shed blood is sprinkled on the cloth, on the sacred possession, and on the novice, sometimes the last being blooded by the smearing of the forehead with the wet knife of sacrifice, as was done to the boys in the Lupercalia Festival before the grotto on the Palatine HiU.
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The sacred possession or secret symbol of the societies varies in make and material.
The PoRo borfima (boreh fima, medicine bag) is a heart-shaped leathern bag filled with a mixture of white of Qgg, rice, blood of red cock, animal fat, and parts of human bodies. It is about six inches long, four to five wide and the same in thickness ; is considered very old ; has never been opened, according to report, since it was made ; is kept in an engraved and painted gourd ; and smells like an open sewer.
The Ndembo mpungu is a bundle of chalk, shingle, grit, crushed bezoar stones, feathers and " other things." It is in a bag said to be of human skin. Its name means mighty or almighty, and it is declared to do things that justify the name.
The Katahwira and Katahwiriba suman (hidden mystery) is said to be a bag of crocodile skin filled with certain human organs, nails and hair.
The BuTWA hwanga hwa kalunga is a duiker horn inside a roan antelope horn, covered by an envelope of red clay mixed with the sticky juice of mulele and other vegetable gums, and decorated with human teeth in a close bead-like pattern. The duiker horn is said to contain human flesh, hair, nails, bone and sinew. In the larger horn are animal claws, bits of lion and leopard heart, of feet of elephants, hide of hippopotamus, shell of tortoise, bird bills, eye of osprey, eyebrow of vulture, head of ngweshi snake, heart of python, head of puff adder, nose of crocodile, brow of hyena, head of dogfish, and human and lizard gall, a tooth of a field rat, a scorpion, a burned honey bee, a baby's head, a human caul, some soldier ants, some powdered meteorites, some sand from a footprint of the founder of the society, a hair of a dead chief, and a piece of a tree upon which an official of the society committed
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suicide. It is supposed to have the properties or virtues of all it contains. For instance, it is said to " strike " like the deadly ngweshi, the snake that erects itself almost perpendicularly and springs to strike.
The MuNGi chife cha fisoko is a basket of the like miscellaneous articles.
All the above, and others of kindred nature, are " parent " fetishes. They are beyond any wealth to buy. Only their use is bestowed. But rich members can obtain, for their own private protection, " children " of these fetishes.
Images, generally in pairs and of phallic origin, with or without cavities containing similar " medi- cine," are used by Egbo, Gelede, Malanda, Ekkpo-Njawhaw, and Org, also Banban, Sembe, and Tilang have shells filled with such substances as chalk, camwood-powder, pepper, and iron filings.
Whatever its shape and filling, the symbol is the power of the society. It has been said that it is as much the soul of the society as was the Golden Stool that of the Ashanti people. It is the home of the society's guardian deity ; his shrine, his Holy of Holies. It is the weapon of the society, and, as such, like the sword that was given a name by its knightly owner, is pledged to the work to which the society has set its hand. And as that sword was broken when in danger of falling into unauthorised and alien hands so these fetishes would be destroyed if there arose danger of them passing from the possession of the societies.
It is on these fetishes that the oath of allegiance is sworn. " An oath sworn on the horjima is as bind- ing as was one sworn on the bones of the saints in the Middle Ages. No one dares to break it for fear of the awful consequences which would inevitably follow," That is true of all of them.
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The oath taken may be something like this. " I, So-and-So, of Such-and-Such a family and village, swear by this medicine to remain faithful to this society, to be obedient to its officers, to be true to its fellowship, and to aid it in every way de- manded of me. If I break this oath, when I go walk- ing may snakes strike me, when I go a canoe-journey may the canoe sink, when I am with friends may my best friend betray me, when I am with my family may the one I love best slay me, when I take (ordeal) medicine may my belly burst. I swear by my liver, my lungs, my kidneys, my heart, my body, my head, my limbs, my genitals, by my blood and by my breath, and by this (the fetish), that should I break this oath I will remain friendless and powerless before my just fate, whatever that fate may be, if of fire of heaven or earth, if of water of heaven or earth, if of man's power or spirit's power, acknow- ledging the justness of that fate, be it death by a stroke or by a thousand lingering strokes."