Whenever a child is born, the other women assemble round the hut of the mother, and make a hideous noise by way of congratulation. Drums are beaten violently, songs are sung, hands are clapped, gratulatory sentences are yelled out at the full stretch of the voice, while a wild and furious dance acts as an accompaniment to the noise. As soon as the mother has recovered, a goat is killed, and she steps backward and forward over its body. One of the women, the wife of the commandant, went through a very curious ceremony when she had recovered her health after her child was born. She took a bunch of dry grass, and lighted it, and then passed it from hand to hand three times round her body while she walked to the left of the door. Another grass tuft was then lighted, and she went through a similar performance as she walked to the front of the door, and the process was again repeated as she walked to the right.
The dances of the Madi are rather variable. The congratulatory dance is performed by jumping up and down without any order, flinging the legs and arms about, and flapping the ribs with the elbows. The young men have a dance of their own, which is far more pleasing than that of the women. Each takes a stick and a drum, and they arrange themselves in a circle, beating the drums, singing, and converging to the centre, and then retiring again in exact time with the rhythm of the drumbeats.
Sometimes there is a grand general dance, in which several hundred performers take part. “Six drums of different sizes, slung upon poles, were in the centre; around these was a moving mass of people, elbowing and pushing one another as at a fair; and outside them a ring of girls, women, and infants faced an outer circle of men sounding horns and armed with spears and clubs, their heads ornamented with ostrich feathers, helmets of the cowrie shell, &c. Never had I seen such a scene of animated savage life, nor heard a more savage noise. As the two large circles of both sexes jumped simultaneously to the music, and moved round at every leap, the women sang and jingled their masses of bracelets, challenging and exciting the men, forcing them to various acts of gallantry, while our Seedees joined in the dance, and no doubt touched many a fair breast.”
The weapons of the Madi are spears and bows and arrows. The spears are about six feet long, with bamboo shafts, and with an iron spike at the butt for the purpose of sticking it in the ground. They are better archers than the generality of African tribes, and amuse themselves by setting up marks, and shooting at them from a distance of forty or fifty yards. The arrows are mostly poisoned, and always so when used for war.
The villages of the Madi are constructed in a very neat manner, the floors being made of a kind of red clay beaten hard and smoothed. The thresholds of the doors are of the same material, but are paved with pieces of broken earthenware pressed into the clay, and ingeniously joined so as to form a kind of pattern. In order to prevent cattle from entering the huts, movable bars of bamboo are generally set across the entrance. The villages are enclosed with a fence, and the inhabitants never allow the sick to reside within the enclosure. They do not merely eject them, as they do in some parts of Africa, but build a number of huts outside the walls by way of a hospital.
The roofs of the huts are cleverly made of bamboo and grass, and upon them is lavished the greater part of the labor of house-building. If therefore the Madi are dissatisfied with the position of a village, or find that neighboring tribes are becoming troublesome, they quietly move off to another spot, carrying with them the most important part of their houses, namely, the roofs, which are so light that a few men can carry them. A village on the march presents a most curious and picturesque spectacle, the roofs of the huts carried on the heads of four or five men, the bamboo stakes borne by others, while some are driving the cattle, and the women are carrying their children and their simple household furniture. The [engraving No. 2] on page 431 represents such a removal.
The Turkish caravans that occasionally pass through the country are the chief cause of these migrations, as they treat the Madi very roughly. When they come to a village, they will not take up their abode inside it, but carry off the roofs of the huts and form a camp with them outside the enclosure. They also rob the corn-stores, and, if the aggrieved owner ventures to remonstrate, he is knocked down by the butt of a musket, or threatened with its contents. In some parts of the country these men had behaved so cruelly to the natives that, as soon as the inhabitants of a village saw a caravan approaching, all the women and children forsook their dwellings, and hid themselves in the bush and grass.