In the picture of a native of Uzinza, Speke shows us a man wearing a cord from the right shoulder to the left hip.[573]
In the picture of Lunga Mândi's son, in Cameron's Across Africa,[574] that young chief is represented as wearing a cord across his body from his right shoulder to the left side.
On the Lower Congo, at Stanley Pool, Stanley met a young chief: "From his shoulders depended a long cloth of check pattern, while over one shoulder was a belt, to which was attached a queer medley of small gourds containing snuff and various charms, which he called his Inkisi."[575] This no doubt was a medicine cord. "According to the custom, which seems to belong to all Africa, as a sign of grief the Dinka wear a cord round the neck."[576] "The Mateb, or baptismal cord, is de rigueur, and worn when nothing else is. It formed the only clothing of the young at Seramba, but was frequently added to with amulets, sure safeguards against sorcery."[577] The Abyssinian Christians wear a blue cord as a sign of having been baptized, and "baptism and the blue cord are, in the Abyssinian mind, inseparable."[578] "The cord,[579] or mateb, without which nobody can be really said in Abyssinia to be respectable."[580] It further resembles the Apache medicine cord, inasmuch as it is "a blue cord around the neck."[581] The baptismal cords are made of "blue floss silk."[582]
THE MAGIC WIND KNOTTED CORDS OF THE LAPPS AND OTHERS.
"The navigators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have related many wonderful stories about the magic of the Finns or Finno Lappes, who sold wind contained in a cord with three knots. If the first were untied, the wind became favourable, if the second, still more so, but, if the third were loosed, a tempest was the inevitable consequence."[583] The selling of wind knots was ascribed not only to the Lapps and Finns, but to the inhabitants of Greenland also.[584] "The northern shipmasters are such dupes to the delusions of these impostors that they often purchase of them a magic cord which contains a number of knots, by opening of which, according to the magician's directions, they expect to gain any wind they want."[585] "They [Lapland witches] further confessed, that while they fastened three knots on a linen towel in the name of the devil, and had spit on them, &c., they called the name of him they doomed to destruction." They also claimed that, "by some fatal contrivance they could bring on men disorders," ... as "by spitting three times on a knife and anointing the victims with that spittle."[586]
Scheffer describes the Laplanders as having a cord tied with knots for the raising of the wind; Brand says the same of the Finlanders, of Norway, of the priestesses of the island of Sena, on the coast of Gaul, in the time of the Emperor Claudius, the "witches" of the Isle of Man, etc.[587]
Macbeth, speaking to the witches, says:
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up.[588]
ROSARIES AND OTHER MNEMONIC CORDS.
The rosary being confessedly an aid to memory, it will be proper to include it in a chapter descriptive of the different forms of mnemonic cords which have been noticed in various parts of the world. The use of the rosary is not confined to Roman Catholics; it is in service among Mahometans, Tibetans, and Persians.[589] Picart mentions "chaplets" among the Chinese and Japanese which very strongly suggest the izze-kloth.[590]