It is considered impossible that a medicine man should maintain a real standing and the absolute faith of the people by mere trickery. Still less is it likely that a charlatan would have so much self-confidence as Kamiri, and therefore one is driven to the conclusion that a man such as Kamiri must repeatedly have proved himself to be right in his detection. The most successful practices in this respect will always be such as work automatically, and the more one sees of noted medicine men the more one inclines to the idea that many of their powers are neither trickery nor mystery, but are simply due to the nervousness or to the mental effect upon the victim or patient.
Kithege was asked if he had any other ways of [[191]]proving the man’s innocence or guilt, and he immediately expressed his readiness to try another test. Asked what he would do, he announced his intention of taking the man’s eye out, and on being stopped he volunteered to put a venomous snake round the man’s neck. Unfortunately both of these experiments entailed more risk than the confidence of the observer would permit, although the suspected man seemed to have no apprehensions as to the danger he was running. [[192]]
[1] A Syrian superstition quoted in “Religion of the Semites,” p. 443, deals with a ceremony to rid gardens of caterpillars, and in that, one of the insects is bewailed and buried and the caterpillars then disappear. [↑]
CHAPTER IV
MISCELLANEOUS MAGICAL PRACTICES
Rain Magic (Ukamba).—The Kamba have no medicine men who specialise in rain-making, and in times of drought they pray and sacrifice at the ithembo, or local shrine, in the manner already described. Some people, however, pretend that by means of a certain medicine they can make rain pass by and not fall at a particular place. The ingredients of this are kept very secret and are only known to a few people. It is a black powder and is placed in the palm of the hand and blown in the direction of the rain storm. Some is also placed in the horn of an antelope and stuck in a tree. It is addressed as follows: “You are now a man and are placed here to keep the rain away; if you fail you stay out here in the rain and I will not take you back into the house, but throw you away into the bush.”
Presumably the concept is that by these means a human, or perhaps anthropomorphic spirit, having the power of averting rain, is bottled up in the horn by the potent medicine, or it may be that the spirit is supposed to be in the medicine itself. It is a pity we do not know what the medicine is composed of, as the reasoning might be the easier to follow.
Burglar’s Magic.—In the author’s “Ethnology of A-Kamba” an example of this in connection with the Machakos district was given—p. 95. The same kind of thing is evidently practised in Kitui, where it is said that a thief will sometimes obtain medicine from a magician and rub it on a stone. He then goes to a village at night and throws it on to the thatch of a hut. [[193]]It is stated that he then probably waits till he hears the people say: “Let us sleep.” He presently enters the hut and goes to the owner and says: “I have come for a cow which I am going to take away.” The owner is apparently hypnotised and unable to refuse, for he answers: “Take such and such a one,” and the people go on sleeping till late the next morning. A neighbour calls at the village early next day, and is surprised to find the door of the hut and of the cattle kraal open, one or two cattle missing, and the people still asleep.