To return, however, to the ceremonial connected with its use: on the appointed day the creditor and debtor meet the elders; the latter sit in a circle and the former sit on the ground in the middle and facing each other. Each takes a piece of fine grass and places [[242]]it inside the aperture in the bead and swears, as the case may be, that he lent a cow, or that he borrowed a cow, and that if he testifies falsely may he be eaten by the bead (i.e., destroyed). Sometimes the bead is held in the hand, and sometimes it is placed on the ground between the two parties.
Perjury is believed to result in the death of the perjurer, and furthermore serious harm, even death, to his near relatives.
If a man who has perjured himself by this oath dies, his brothers by the same parents will promptly pay the debt, and then call in the elders to remove the curse, or thahu, which the perjury has inflicted. To effect this lustration, the sacred bead has to be brought to the village, a sheep is killed and some of the stomach contents are smeared on the bead. Another sheep is next marched round the afflicted village, is killed, and the people eat the meat. The bones of the sheep are afterwards collected and calcined in the fire on which the meat was cooked, next morning a libation of beer being poured over the ashes of the bones by the elders of the village. A medicine man is then summoned, and he purifies (tahikia) the villages, and these are finally safe from all danger from this thahu.
There is another piece of ritual in which beads play a part. If an elder or old woman dies in one village, and later on a similar death occurs in a neighbouring village, the head of each village goes to assist at the hukura or death ceremonies (described in [Chapter VI]) at the village where the death has occurred. At the conclusion of these ceremonies each will have two blue trade ring beads, of the pattern known as mtinorok, fastened on his wrist, and the senior wife of the principal elder of the village where the death occurred will have two beads tied to her wrist; they wear these for eight days, and then bathe and cast the beads into a river; finally they wash their clothes there and return home.
The custom is practised only by the people belonging [[243]]to the Kikuyu circumcision guild. The blue beads used on this occasion are ordinary trade beads and are called chuma cha mchugu, but are not the sacred beads referred to in the earlier portion of this chapter. Probably, as the real chuma cha mchugu are very rare, they pretend that these are the real articles, or think they delude the spirits into believing that the beads are the genuine thing.
The sacred bead is also said to be used for the detection of thieves; the elders declare that the bead is first doctored by a medicine man and then thrown away in the direction of the suspected person, and the elders simultaneously cry out, “Go and find the thief.” The belief is that after it is thus thrown the bead will enter the stomach of the offender and trouble him to such an extent that he will be forced to confess, and he can then be ceremonially purified and healed.
The Muma Oath and Adultery.—A case of adultery occurred in Kikuyu in which a man, having seduced a woman, afterwards induced her to take the oath of muma that she would not tell her husband. After a time she disclosed this to her husband and, shortly after, she died. The husband then sued for blood money, but the elders refused his demand on the ground that if the woman had held her tongue the muma would not have killed her. The husband then demanded that the man should jump over the corpse seven times; this he refused to do and the elders would not insist as they held that the woman had, in fact, committed suicide. [[244]]
[1] These are probably ancient carnelian beads; they are occasionally found among the divination apparatus of medicine men; they almost certainly were derived from Egypt or the Nile valley. [↑]