Plowden, writing of the defterers, said: “They are often more learned than the priests, and equally take advantage of the general ignorance. Their principal gain is by writing amulets and charms against every disease, almost against death. . . . They also profess medicine, and as they do not much analyze the effects of their drugs, many an unfortunate falls a victim to some poisonous plant administered as a love philtre. Most of them are hangers-on of the different churches; they are generally cunning, debauched, and mischief-makers.”[246]
Mr. Wylde, speaking of the Abyssinian clergy of the present time, says, “They know that the days are gone by when every one came to them for some charm or a little holy water to cure a complaint; the very practical nineteenth-century doctor is to be found, and not only the congregation has deserted to the modern school of medicine, but the priest himself will trust in the new treatment in preference to running the risk in getting cured by faith or unfiltered holy water.”[247]
A peculiar disease is found in Abyssinia, chiefly but not exclusively among the women. Dufton describes a typical case: “I had the satisfaction of seeing in Gaffat a case of bouda. This term is given to a phenomenon of mental abstraction, which the natives explain as ‘being possessed by the devil.’ The case I am about to mention happened to a female in the service of one of the Europeans. Her symptoms began in a kind of fainting fit, in which the fingers were clenched in the palms of the hands, the eyes glazed, the nostrils distended, and the whole body stiff and inflexible. Afterwards she commenced a hideous laugh in imitation of the hyena, and began running about on all fours; she was then seized by the bystanders, and a bouda doctor having been called in, this individual began questioning her as to the person who had possessed her with this hyena devil. She said he was a man living in Gooderoo, south of Abyssinia, and also told how long the spirit would be in possession, and what was required to expel him. Great care must be taken of persons thus afflicted, as cases of this kind sometimes end in death. All their demands for dress, food, trifles of any sort, must be strictly attended to. In the height of the frenzy they will sometimes carry out the idea of their hyena identity to such an extent as to attack any animal that may happen to be in the way. One woman fancied she would like a little donkey-flesh; so to gratify her strange taste she seized hold by her teeth to the hinder part of one which happened to be near. Off went the astonished beast at a pace that nothing in the form of persuasion will lead him to adopt for the gratification of man. Off, too, clinging tight with her teeth to his haunches, went the frenzied girl. Only force would induce her to forego the tender morsel.
“They have several cures for this strange attack; but the never-failing one is a mixture of some obscene filth, which is concealed in some part of the house, whereupon the woman is said to go directly, on all fours, to where it is and swallow it. This would seem incredible, but thousands of corroborative facts, known to Abyssinian residents, put it beyond a doubt.
“The power of possessing persons with the devil is attributed mostly to Jewish blacksmiths; and women and children are terrified when they meet, in a solitary place, a blacksmith who is a Jew. These sorcerers are also said to be endued with the power of changing the shape of the object of their incantations.”[248]
Stern has given some interesting particulars with regard to these seizures. “During the rainy season, when the weather, like the mind, is cheerless and dull, the boudas, as if in mockery of the universal gloom, celebrate their saturnalia. In our small settlement, the monotony of our existence was constantly diversified by a bouda scene. Towards the close of August, when every shrub and tree began to sprout and blossom, the disease degenerated into a regular epidemic; and in the course of an evening two, three, and not unfrequently every hut occupied by natives would ring with that familiar household cry. A heavy thunderstorm, by some mysterious process, seemed invariably to predispose the people to the bouda’s torturing influence.
“I remember one day, about the end of August, we had a most terrific tempest. . . . The noise and tumult of the striving elements had scarcely subsided, when a servant of Mr. Mayer, a stout, robust, and masculine woman, began to exhibit the bouda symptoms. She had been complaining the whole noon of languor, faintness, and utter incapacity for all physical exertion. About sunset her lethargy increased, and she gradually sank into a state of apparent unconsciousness. Her fellow-servants, who were familiar with the cause of the complaint, at once pronounced her to be possessed. To outwit the conjuror, I thought it advisable to try the effect of strong liquid ammonia on the nerves of the Evil One. The place being dark, faggots were ignited; and in their bright flickering light we beheld a mass of dark figures squatted on the wet floor around a rigid, motionless, and apparently dead woman. I instantly applied my bottle to her nose; but although the potent smell made all near raise a cry of terror, it produced no more effect on the passive and insensible patient than if it had been water from the newly formed rivulets.”
The landlord of the settlement, “an amateur exorcist, almost by instinct, as if anticipating something wrong in that part of his domains occupied by the Franks, made his appearance in the very nick of time. This bloated and limping dotard, who had wasted his youth and manhood in folly and vice, for which, in his old age, he sought to atone by discarding one after the other of his former wives, and by poring over the legends of saints and martyrs, no sooner hobbled into the hut than the possessed woman, as if struck by a magnetic wire, burst into loud fits of laughter and the paroxysms of a raving maniac. Half a dozen stalwart fellows caught hold of her, but frenzy imparted a vigour to her frame which even the united strength of these athletes was barely sufficient to keep under control. She tried to bite, kick, and tear every one within reach; and when she found herself foiled in all those mischievous attempts, she convulsively grasped the unpaved wet floor, and, in imitation of the hyena, gave utterance to the most discordant sounds. Manacled and shackled with leather thongs, she was now partly dragged and partly carried to an open grassy spot; and there under the starry vault of heaven, and in the presence of a considerable number of people, the conjurer, in a businesslike manner, began his exorcising art. The poor sufferer, as if conscious of the dreaded old man’s presence, struggled frantically to escape his skill; but the latter, disregarding her entreaties and lamentations, her fits of unnatural gaiety and bursts of thrilling anguish, with one hand laid an amulet on her heaving bosom, whilst, with the other, he made her smell a rag, in which the root of a strong scented plant, a bone of a hyena, and some other abominable unguents were bound up. The mad rage of the possessed woman being instantaneously hushed by this operation, the conjurer addressed himself to the bouda (evil spirit), and, in language not fit for ears polite, requested him to give his name.” The demon is always masculine, whatever may be the sex of the person possessed. Question and answer followed, and finally the “conjurer” formally exorcised the demon. “‘I command thee in the name of the Blessed Trinity, the twelve apostles, and the three hundred and eighteen bishops at the council of Nicaea, to leave this woman, and never more to molest her.’
“The bouda did not feel disposed to obey the conjurer; but on being threatened with a repast of glowing coals, which the majority do not relish, he became docile, and in a sulky and ventriloquizing tone of voice, promised to obey the request.
“Still anxious to delay his exit, he demanded something to eat; and to my utter disgust, his taste was as coarse as the torments inflicted on the young woman were ungallant. Filth and dirt of the most revolting description, together with an admixture of water, were the choice delicacies he selected for his supper. This strange fare, which the most niggardly hospitality could not refuse, several persons hastened to prepare, and when all was ready, and the earthen dish had been hidden in the centre of a leafy shrub, the conjurer said to the bouda, ‘As thy father did, so do thou.’ These words had scarcely escaped the lips of the exorcist, when the possessed person leaped up, and, crawling on all fours, sought the dainty repast which she lapped with a sickening avidity and greediness. She now laid hold of a stone, which three strong men could scarcely lift, and raising it aloft in the air, whirled it madly round her head for two seconds, and then fell senseless on the ground. In half an hour she recovered, but was quite unconscious of what had transpired.