From first-class native informants I have had fragments of accounts of making-father ceremonies. Particularly interesting have been their accounts of what the live chief says to the dead one. Much of it, of course, is, for diplomatic reasons, not known outside official circles. But the general tone of these communications is well known to be of a nature to discourage the dead chief from returning, and to reconcile him to his existing state. Things are not what they were here. The price of oil is down, women are ten times more frivolous, slaves ten times more trying, white Consul men abound, also their guns are more deadly than of old, this new Consul looks worse than the last, there is nothing but war and worry for a chief nowadays. The whole country is going to the dogs financially and domestically, in fact, and you are much better off where you are. Then come petitions for such help as the ghost chief and his ghost retinue can give.
This, I think, explains why chiefs’ funeral customs in the Rivers differ in kind, not merely in grade, from those of big trade boys or other important people, and also accounts for their repetition at intervals. Big trade boys, and the slaves and women sent down with them, return to a full human form more or less promptly; mere low grade slaves, slaves that cannot pull a canoe, i.e., provide a war canoe for the service of the House out of their own private estate, are not buried at all—they are thrown away, unless they have a mother who will bury them. They will come back again all right as slaves, but then that is all they are fit for.
Then we have left very interesting sections of the community to consider from a funeral rite point of view—namely, those in human form who are not, strictly speaking, human beings, and those who, though human, have committed adultery with spirits—women who bear twins or who die in child-birth. These sinners, I may briefly remark, are neither buried nor just thrown away; they are, as far as possible, destroyed. But with the former class the matter is slightly different. Children, for example, that arrive with ready cut teeth, will in a strict family be killed or thrown away in the bush to die as they please; but the feeling against them is not really keen. They may, if the mother chooses to be bothered with them, be reared; but the interesting point is that any property they may acquire during life has no legal heir whatsoever. It must be dissipated, thrown away. This shows clearly that such individuals are not human, and, moreover, they are not buried nor destroyed at death; they are just thrown away. There is no particular harm in them as there is in the sin-stained twins.
The only class in West Africa I have found that are like these spirit humans is that strange class, the minstrels. I wish I knew more about these people. Were it not that Mr. F. Swanzy possesses material evidence of their existence, in the shape of the most superb song-net, I should hesitate to mention them at all. Some of my French friends, however, tell me they have seen them in Senegal, and I venture to think that region must be their headquarters. I have seen one in Accra, one in Sierra Leone, two on board steamers, and one in Buana town, Cameroon. Briefly, these are minstrels who frequent market towns, and for a fee sing stories. Each minstrel has a song-net—a strongly made net of a fishing net sort. On to this net are tied all manner and sorts of things, pythons’ back bones, tobacco pipes, bits of china, feathers, bits of hide, birds’ heads, reptiles’ heads, bones, &c., &c., and to every one of these objects hangs a tale. You see your minstrel’s net, you select an object and say how much that song. He names an exorbitant price; you haggle; no good. He won’t be reasonable, say over the python bone, so you price the tobacco pipe—more haggle; finally you settle on some object and its price, and sit down on your heels and listen with rapt attention to the song, or, rather, chant. You usually have another. You sort of dissipate in novels, in fact. I do not say it’s quiet reading, because unprincipled people will come headlong and listen when you have got your minstrel started, without paying their subscription. Hence a row, unless you are, like me, indifferent to other people having a little pleasure.
These song-nets, I may remark, are not of a regulation size. I have never seen on the West Coast anything like so superb a collection of stories as Mr. Swanzy has tied on that song-net of his—Woe is me! without the translating minstrel, a cycle of dead songs that must have belonged to a West African Shakespeare. The most impressive song-net that I saw was the one at Buana. Its owner I called Homer on the spot, because his works were a terrific two. Tied on to his small net were a human hand and a human jaw bone. They were his only songs. I heard them both regardless of expense. I did not understand them, because I did not know his language; but they were fascinating things, and the human hand one had a passage in it which caused the singer to crawl on his hands and knees, round and round, stealthily looking this side and that, giving the peculiar leopard questing cough, and making the leopard mark on the earth with his doubled-up fist. Ah! that was something like a song! It would have roused a rock to enthusiasm; a civilised audience would have smothered its singer with bouquets. I—well, the headman with me had to interfere and counsel moderation in heads of tobacco.
But what I meant to say about these singers was only this. They are not buried as other people are; they are put into trees when they are dead—may be because they are “all same for one” with those singers the birds. I do not know, I only hope Homer is still extant, and that some more intelligent hearer than I will meet with him.
[To face page 151.
The southern boundary of the Calabar school of Fetish lies in narrower regions than the boundary between it and Ellis’s school in the north. I venture to think that this may in a measure arise from there being in the southern region the additional element of difference of race. For immediately below Calabar in the Cameroon territory the true Negro meets the Bantu. In Cameroon in the tribes of the Dualla stem we have a people speaking a Bantu language, and having a Bantu culture, yet nevertheless having a great infusion of pure Negro blood, and largely under the dominion of the true Negro thought form.