Watching the grass-fires one night towards the end of the dry season, I remember seeing a strange, sudden blaze on Nyambadwe Hill; the flames rushing to an enormous height—whether from some change of wind, or because they had caught a large dead tree, I do not know. I happened to speak of this next day to an old man (a good-for-nothing old man he was, by the bye, though that is nothing to the present purpose), and he said that he had looked out of his hut and seen it too, remarking, cryptically, that it was due to afiti. He went on to tell me that he sometimes heard them passing by at night—they flew over the tree-tops with a great whirring of wings. In fact, it appeared that they could do ‘most anything.’ The boys, who dared not go out at night for fear of afiti, asserted that they carried a light which you could see afar off, but put it out when you came near them, and that they could make themselves large and small instantaneously. Some held that it was good to pluck up heart and address them; others, that if you spoke to them, you would become dumb like Mœris, when the wolf saw him first. I did not at the time understand the precise connection between the witches and the fire; but it appears that the grave itself becomes luminous when they gather there. ‘When a fire is seen on a distant hill, where no fire can be accounted for’—that is the place of their assembly. They call the dead man by his childish name (which none ever uses after he has once passed through the mysteries), and he cannot choose but come out of the grave—then they tear him limb from limb and eat him. When you consider that people believe this, not as a piece of curious folk-lore, but as a solid conviction forming part of everyday life, it is hardly surprising that they think no treatment too bad for the witches—if they can be caught.
This may be done in various ways—most, if not all of which, we must remember, are used for the detection of other things besides witches. There is the Mabisalila or Mavumbula, the woman who dances herself into a state of frenzy, and reveals the name of the guilty person. She comes to stay at the village which has requisitioned her services, and so gains time to glean all the gossip of the place before pronouncing her opinion, and also to bury the horns during her nightly prowls, ostensibly undertaken for the purpose of spying on the Witches’ Sabbath, and seeing who leaves the village to attend it. She is able to make her investigations quite undisturbed, as no one likes to venture out after dark during her stay, lest he should meet her and be fixed on as the culprit. When her preparations are complete, the people are called together by the sound of the great drum. Then she begins to dance, working up herself and the spectators to a furious pitch of excitement, rushes round, smells their hands to see if she can detect any traces of strange food eaten at the unholy banquet, and at last calls on the guilty person by the name she pretends to have heard him addressed by at the grave. When no one answers, she says ‘So-and-So is known in the village by such and such a name,’ and then leads the way to his house, where the horns are dug up. The enraged people usually lynch the accused on the spot.
The ordeal of the mwavi is resorted to when people are suspected either of witchcraft or of some other crime, such as theft; and as it is a regular form of judicial procedure, it is perhaps best to consider it more fully under that heading. Here I need only say that the poison is administered to the suspected person; if he dies, his guilt is established; if he recovers, he is ipso facto acquitted. In some districts the poison used does not cause death, but the guilt or innocence of the accused is decided according to the different symptoms produced.
Under the heading of ‘oracles’ we may include a great many different processes of divination, some partaking of a judicial character, such as the following, of which a very curious description is given by an eye-witness, the Rev. H. Rowley. If there was no cheating, it seems to have been a case of what is known as ‘motor automatism.’
‘Some corn had been stolen from the garden of one of Chigunda’s people. The owner complained to the chief, who employed the services of a celebrated medicine-man living near. The people assembled round a large fig-tree, and the magician ... first of all produced two sticks, about four feet long, and about the thickness of an ordinary broom-handle; these, after certain mysterious manipulations and utterings of unintelligible gibberish, he delivered, with much solemnity, to four young men, two being appointed to each stick. Then from his goat-skin bag he brought forth a zebra-tail, which he gave to another young man, and after that a calabash filled with peas, which he delivered to a boy. The medicine-man rolled himself about in hideous fashion and chanted an unearthly incantation; then came the man with the zebra-tail, followed by the boy with the calabash, moving, first of all, slowly round the men with the sticks, but presently quickening their pace and shaking the tail and the calabash over the heads of the stick-holders.... Ere long the spell worked. The men with the sticks were subject to spasmodic twitchings of the arms and legs. These increased rapidly, until they were nearly in convulsions; they foamed at the mouth; their eyes seemed starting from their heads.... According to the Mang’anja notion, it was the sticks that were possessed primarily, the men through them.... The men seemed scarcely able to hold the sticks, which took a rotary motion at first and whirled the holders round and round like mad things. Then headlong they dashed off into the bush, through stubborn grass and thorny shrub, over every obstacle—nothing stopped them; their bodies were torn and bleeding. Round to the gaping assembly again they came, went through a few more rotary motions, and then, rushing along the path at a killing pace, halted not until they fell down, panting and exhausted, in the hut of one of Chigunda’s slave-wives. The woman happened to be at home, and the sticks were rolled to her very feet.’ She, however, vehemently asserted her innocence, and offered to take mwavi to prove it, which she did by proxy, the poison being administered to a fowl. The second oracle reversed the decision of the first, and the defendant was acquitted; but, curiously enough, no one’s faith seems to have been shaken by the contradiction between two infallible ordeals.
The Rev. Duff Macdonald alludes to this kind of divination, but very briefly; it seems to be more Nyanja than Yao. He says that the sorcerer ‘occasionally makes men lay hold of a stick which, after a time, begins to move as if endowed with life, and ultimately carries them off bodily and with great speed to the house of the thief.’
I have never heard of this oracle of the sticks in the Blantyre or Upper Shiré district. Of course, it by no means follows that it is not used; but from various indications I fancy that the witch-detective, the Mabisalila, whose operations have already been described, has been more popular since the time of the Yao settlement. The ‘sticks’ are still in vogue on the Lake. The Rev. H. B. Barnes, of the Universities’ Mission, was told of a man at Ngofi who possessed this charm, and ‘had bought it with much money at the coast.... It was described to me as consisting of two short pieces of wood, with a large feather behind the second. The master of the charm sets it on the ground near the place whence the disappearance has taken place, and keeps his hand on the feather, following it as it moves off on the track. It is also used when war is threatening, in order to ascertain the safest direction in which to flee.’[16]
There are various methods of divination besides those already referred to. The sorcerer puts bits of stick and pebbles into a gourd, shakes them up, and throws them out, deducing his answer to the questions put from their position as they lie on the ground. I am sorry to say I never saw this done, and cannot discover from any of the native accounts before me whether there is a system of interpretation which allows one to get an answer out of almost any possible combination of the ‘pieces’—as among the Delagoa Bay people; but it is probable that the diviner follows some such rules. Neither the ‘divining tablets’ of the Mashona, nor the knuckle-bones of sheep and goats seem to be used—their place is taken by small pieces of wood (mpinjiri), sometimes neatly cut into shape, and the claws of the tortoise, which are divided into four pieces—the front or tip of the claw being halved to make a ‘male’ and a ‘female’ piece (which are marked on the under side), and in like manner the back. One way of consulting this oracle is to spread all the pieces on a dry skin and then knock it from underneath, and catch in the hand the piece (if any) which jumps off; if the same piece comes twice running, it is a conclusive proof that the person whom the diviner thought of, when he made the inquiry, is the correct one. Another way is to put the lots into a jar, cover it up, and leave it for a time; if they still keep their relative positions when next looked at, the omens for the journey or other undertaking inquired about are favourable. Mr. Macdonald found that the Yao professional diviners were usually very intelligent men, who gave sensible advice according to their own lights, and invested it with a certain impressiveness by means of the ‘lot,’ thinking people would care nothing about it, or perhaps take offence, unless they could attribute it to a supernatural source.
Many men consult the oracle on their own account, especially on a journey, either by means of the flour-pyramid, as already described, or by sticking a knife into the ground and leaning two small sticks against it, or laying two sticks on the ground, and a third across them. If they fall down, or are disturbed from their position, the omen is unfavourable. There are many other omens which would cause a party to turn back, unless very much set on an expedition—such as one of them striking his foot against a stump (a common accident, to judge by the number of ulcerated toes one sees), or certain creatures crossing the path—some kinds of snakes, the chameleon, etc.—the partridge’s cry, and so on. The evil-smelling mdzodzo and mtumbatumba ants, on the other hand, are supposed (perhaps by the rule of contraries) to be of good augury.