[Offerings.]
... Andrew Battell lived among them [the Bramas of Loango][230] for two years and a half. They are, saith he, heathens, and observe many superstitions. They have their Mokissos or images [nkishi] to which they offer in proportion to their sorts and suits;[231] the fisher offereth fish when he sueth for his help in his fishing; the countryman, wheat; the weaver, Alibungos,[232] [that is] pieces of cloth; others bring bottles of wine; all wanting that they would have, and bringing what they want, furnishing their Mokisso with those things whereof they complain themselves to be disfurnished.
[Funeral Rites.]
Their ceremonies for the dead are divers. They bring goats and let them bleed at the Mokisso’s foot, which they after consume in a feasting memorial of the deceased party, which is continued four or five days together, and that four or five several times in the year, by all his friends and kindred. The days are known, and though they dwell twenty miles thence, yet they will resort to these memorial exequies, and, beginning in the night, will sing doleful and funeral songs till day, and then kill, as aforesaid, and make merry. The hope of this maketh such as have store of friends to contemn death; and the want of friends to bewail him makes a man conceive a more dreadful apprehension of death.[233]
[Prohibitions—Taboo.]
Their conceit is so ravished with superstition that many die of none other death. Kin[234] is the name of unlawful and prohibited meat, which, according to each kindred’s devotion, to some family is some kind of fish; to another a hen; to another, a buffe [beef]; and so of the rest: in which they observe their vowed abstinence so strictly that if any should (though all unawares) eat of his Kin, he would die of conceit, always presenting to his accusing conscience the breach of his vow, and the anger of Mokisso. He hath known divers thus to have died, and sometimes would, when some of them had eaten with him, make them believe that they had eaten of their Kin, till, having sported himself with their superstitious agony, he would affirm the contrary.
They use to set in their fields and places where corn or fruits grow, a basket, with goat’s horns, parrot’s feathers, and other trash: this is the Mokisso’s Ensign, or token, that it is commended to his custody; and therefore, the people very much addicted to theft, dare not meddle, or take anything. Likewise, if a man, wearied with his burthen, lay it down in the highway, and knit a knot of grass, and lay thereon; or leave any other note (known to them) to testify that he hath left it there in the name of his idol, it is secured from the lime-fingers of any passenger. Conceit would kill the man that should transgress in this kind.[235]
In the banza [mbanza], or chief city, the chief idol is named Chekoke.[236] Every day they have there a market, and the Chekoke is brought forth by the Ganga, or priest, to keep good rule, and is set in the market-place to prevent stealing. Moreover, the king hath a Bell,[237] the strokes whereof sound such terror into the heart of the fearful thief that none dare keep any stolen goods after the sound of that bell. Our author inhabited in a little reed-house, after the Loango manner, and had hanging by the walls, in a cloth case, his piece, wherewith he used to shoot fowls for the king, which, more for the love of the cloth than the piece, was stolen. Upon complaint, this bell (in form like a cow-bell) was carried about and rung, with proclamation to make restitution; and he had his piece next morning set at his door. The like another, found in a bag of beans of a hundred pound weight, stolen from him, and recovered by the sound of this bell.
[Poison Ordeal.][238]
They have a dreadful and deadly kind of trial in controversies, after this manner: there is a little tree, or shrub, with a small root (it is called Imbunda) about the bigness of one’s thumb, half a foot long, like a white carrot. Now, when any listeth to accuse a man, or a family, or whole street, of the death of any of his friends, saying, that such a man bewitched him, the Ganga assembleth the accused parties, and scrapes that root, the scrapings whereof he mixeth with water, which makes it as bitter as gall (he tasted of it); one root will serve for the trial of a hundred men. The Ganga brews the same together in gourds, and with plantain stalks hitteth everyone, after they have drunk, with certain words. Those that have received the drink walk by, till they can make urine, and then they are thereby free’d. Others abide till either urine frees them, or dizziness takes them, which the people no sooner perceive but they cry, Undoke, Undoke,[239] that is “naughty witch”; and he is no sooner fallen by his dizziness, but they knock him on the head, and dragging him away, hurl him over the cliff. In every Liberty[240] they have such drinks, which they make in case of theft, and death of any person. Every week it falls out that some or other undergoes this trial, which consumeth multitudes of people.