There seems to be some difference of opinion with regard to the degree to which the spirits will make communications in dreams. An old Nyanja chief said to Livingstone, ‘Sometimes the dead do come back, and appear to us in dreams; but they never speak nor tell us where they have gone, nor how they fare.’ On the other hand, as we have seen, communications in dreams are expected as a regular thing. The Anyanja and Makololo (says Mr. Macdonald) were inclined to lay more stress on dreams than on the oracle of the ufa cone. They argued that, if you put the flour down carefully enough, it will always assume the proper pyramidal shape, and if you cover it with an upturned pot overnight (the usual practice), it will keep it—unless the rats overturn the pot. Perhaps this was due to the rationalising influence of the Makololo, who had been longer in contact with white men, and (like other natives in like case) were always burning to assert the superiority which this gave them.
If the dreams are not sufficiently explicit, we must fall back on the prophet or prophetess. Macdonald’s account tallies with the description of the woman set apart for the service of Mbona, except that he speaks of one living in a village with her family, who may arouse the neighbours with her shrieks in the dead of night. The people assemble to hear the message delivered by the spirits, and then return to bed; ‘or there may be a great meeting in the morning, when the prophetess appears, her head encircled with Indian hemp, and her arms cut as if for new tatus.’
But the Kubwebweta inspiration may come on any one, at any time, or in any place. Thus, one of a party of carriers on a journey suddenly finds himself ‘possessed,’ and his companions listen to his ravings with the greatest reverence. These utterances of possessed people always require some one to interpret them, and ‘an old woman or other skilled person’ is usually found. Macdonald says nothing of this, in the case of the prophetess, but if, as is probably the case, she is more or less of a professional,[12] she will have the necessary skill herself. The messages are not, as a rule, of a very recondite character—either the deceased chief wishes to help his people by warning them of war, or telling them where game may be found; or he feels himself neglected (like old Chipoka), and demands such and such offerings. Namzuruwa, an ancient chief of the district below the Murchison Cataracts, occasionally inspires people in this way.
The dead sometimes appear in visible form, as a native told the Rev. D. C. Scott: ‘People sometimes see those who have died and are dead walking outside in the gardens.’[13] I have never had the luck to hear a ghost story at first hand myself—the ‘night fears’ of the small boys whom I found objecting to go out after dark were connected, not with ghosts, but with wizards, of whom more presently.
There are haunted places in the Bush, where spirits are supposed to be heard, but not seen. M. Junod was told, over and over again, in the Delagoa Bay country, of people who had heard the drumming and singing of the spirits. These haunted spots were the burial-places of the chiefs, and no doubt this is so in other cases. The Anyanja have a curious account of ‘the spirits’ hill,’ where people who go, carrying pots on their heads, have them lifted off by the baboons, and hear a sound, ‘as of people answering.’ They also speak of the ‘spirit-drums’—the small ones sounding piye! piye! and the big ones, pi! pi! as though a dance were going on, and so far as one can gather, these spirits seem to be thought of as in sight like ordinary men and women—not the little εἴδωλα who dwell in the spirit-houses.
The notion of a connection between religion and morality comes comparatively late in human development; but we can perhaps see traces of it in the idea of the chirope. This means that, when a man has killed another man, he will either be ill, or be seized by a sort of murderous madness till he has performed some expiatory ceremony. The accounts I have before me are somewhat different, but are not, perhaps, inconsistent with one another. Among the Yaos, in Macdonald’s time, it seems to have been a condition that the victim should not be an enemy (towards whom no obligations were recognised), or even a person of the same tribe, whose kinsfolk could take up the feud and demand compensation. But, if a Yao killed his own slave (or, apparently, his child, his younger brother, or any one under his charge), he feared that he ‘would pine away, lose his eyesight, and die miserably, unless he went to the chief, paid him a certain fee, and said, “Give me a charm, for I have slain a man.”’ The Angoni, like the Zulus, apply the notion to killing a man in battle, and think that, unless they gash the bodies of the slain, so as to let out the air from the intestines, and prevent the corpse from swelling, they will be attacked by a mysterious disease which causes their own bodies to swell up. (This precise symptom is not given in the accounts before us, but is believed in by the Zulus, and probably by the Angoni.) The Angoni afterwards dance a war-dance ‘to throw off the chirope.’ The word appears to be connected with mlopa, ‘blood,’ used particularly of blood shed in killing—as of animals in hunting—and the idea is that the spirit of the slain enters the body of the slayer. This is even the case with animals; and hence it is the custom for the hunter to cut off a small piece of the meat as soon as he has shot any animal, throw it on the fire, and eat it, ‘because of the spirit of the beast that enters into one if one does not.’
The Angoni and various other tribes west of the Lake have a belief that there is a distinct relation between smallpox and morality; that, if the disease attacks a village where the moral tone is good, all the patients will recover; whereas, in a place given, as the native statement puts it, ‘to adultery and other sins,’ every one who sickens, young or old, will die. The locality, and various other circumstances, make it unlikely that this is an imported notion.
It is generally believed that the Eastern Bantu have no ‘idols’ properly so called; and their charms, to which we shall come back later, do not usually take the form of human figures. But the Tonga chiefs used to carry about with them little wooden images called angoza—representing men, women, or animals. Sometimes they were only sticks with a little head carved at one end. The Rev. A. G. MacAlpine, who seems puzzled what to make of them, does not state whether any are now in existence. ‘Long ago they used to be owned by chiefs only, and were lodged in the house of the head-wife.... They were not displayed except on special occasions. In the talking of important cases, they are said to have been brought out and planted in the ground at some little distance from the chief, and when he went on a journey they might be carried along with him, both of which uses would suggest their being an emblem of authority.... Often people came asking to see them, when they would be brought out covered up and not exposed till some gift had been made.’ We find that the Achewa have articles described as ‘fetiches’ and consisting ‘of a few short pieces of wood the size of one’s forefinger, bound together with a scrap of calico into the figure of a child’s doll. Inside the calico is concealed a tiny box made of the handle of a gourd-cup, ... [and] supposed to contain the spirit of some dead ancestor.’ Spirits wandering homeless in the bush are apt to annoy the living in various ways, till captured by a ‘doctor’ and confined in one of these receptacles.
The Yao children play with dolls bearing about as much resemblance to the human figure as a ninepin, but evidently intended to represent it. If games are survivals of religious ceremonies, they may originally have been teraphim, or fetiches of some sort. The ‘ugly images’ found by Livingstone near Lake Mweru, in ‘huts built for them,’ which were used in rain-making and cases of illness, seem to have been somewhat different from the angoza of the Atonga.[14]