If the owner of the village should meet a large caterpillar, called thatu, near the gate, he pours a little fat and milk in its path; if it turns back, all is well. If, on the other hand, it should walk round the spot where the fat, and so forth, was poured, and still come on towards the village, the people know that it is a spirit which has assumed the form of a caterpillar, and a ram is sacrificed in the village. If one of these caterpillars is found in a food hut, a ram is again sacrificed for the same reason.
Should anyone set fire to the grass or scrub on the spot where the dead are thrown out, spirits of the departed are supposed to be heard calling out. When this happens, the person who lit the fire gives a ram, which must be killed on the spot, and the elders of ukuru sprinkle the tatha all round to appease the ngoma.
Sometimes a spirit will come and call in a peculiar [[52]]way outside a village at night. The people believe that it is hungry, and next day sacrifice a ram.
The elders, when they eat, always throw a little food to the spirits before commencing their meal, and at a beer-drinking always pour a little beer on the ground to propitiate the spirits so that they may not harm them. Women, too, when they are cooking porridge or gruel, invariably throw some on the ground for the spirits.
Description of a Sacrifice at a Sacred Fig Tree in Kikuyu. (Witnessed by the Author.)—The elders first took some sugar cane and poured a little on each side and in front of the tree, praying at the same time. The sacrificial ram was then strangled, held up before the tree, and its throat pierced. The blood was collected in a cow’s horn and a little poured out on each side of the tree and allowed to trickle down the trunk. At this stage of the proceedings another prayer was uttered.
A strip of skin and fat running from the throat of the carcase down to its belly, and including the genitals, was then cut off and hung up on a small branch projecting from the tree. The elders now prayed again. After this the ram was dismembered and the feast took place.
If the head of a village notices the appearance of disease among his flocks and herds, or among his people, he sacrifices at his own sacred tree. But he first of all consults a mundu mugo, or medicine man, to find out whether the affliction comes from the high god or is due to the offended ngoma, or ancestral spirits. The medicine man throws his stones, and if, after sorting them into little heaps, the balance left is eight, he knows the trouble comes from the high god; if, on the other hand, the balance is seven, the trouble is attributed to the ngoma or ancestral spirits.
For a man, the heap consists of five stones, and for a woman three. [[53]]
The sacrificial ram is obtained from a neighbour.