CHAPTER XVI
TALES OF FETICH BASED ON FACT
The view-point of the native African mind, in all unusual occurrences, is that of witchcraft. Without looking for an explanation in what civilization would call natural causes, his thought turns at once to the supernatural. Indeed, the supernatural is so constant a factor in his life, that to him it furnishes explanation of events as prompt and reasonable as our reference to the recognized forces of nature. Mere coincidences are often to him miracles.
In the large mass of materials which I gathered from all native sources of information for the formulation of the philosophy of fetichism, as presented in the former part of this work, I found many remarkable tales some of whose incidents were probable, and which to me were explicable on natural grounds, but which my native friends believed were the effect of witchcraft power. I did not dispute them. To do so would either have closed their lips or made them omit the witchcraft element from any subsequent stories they might narrate to me. I thus secured these tales as a purely native product.
I did not use a note-book, fearing that its presence would hamper the freedom of the story-teller, but listened carefully and wrote down the interview immediately at its close. Not all knew that I was writing for publication. That knowledge would have interfered with the simplicity of their utterances. Of my several informants, some were ignorant, some heathen, some Christian, only a few well educated. Of the most intelligent of my informants, two allowed me to take notes as they were speaking, and I really wrote from dictation; they considerately spoke slowly, so that I should miss nothing, while I wrote rapidly and at the same time had to translate their language into English. Of those two, one was able to give part of the interview in English. The thoughts in these stories are entirely native. So are most of the words. I tried to retain the narrators’ own structure of sentences, sacrificing a little of English for the sake of native idioms. The prevalence of short words is due to my effort at exact translation of their own words. Occasionally I have used longer words of Latin origin because I had forgotten their word, and in an effort to repeat their idea. The shortness of the sentences is due to the natives’ graphic and animated style of speaking. Long sentences are foreign to their mode of speech.
The following two stories are illustrative of the native belief, mentioned in Chapter IV, that we possess not only our physical body, but also an essential or “astral” form, in shape and feature like the body. This form, or “life,” with its “heart,” can be stolen by magic power while one is asleep, and the individual sleeps on unconscious of his loss. If the life-form is returned to him before he awakes, he will be unaware that anything unusual has happened. If he awakes before that portion of him has been returned, though he may live for a while, he will sicken and eventually die. If the magicians who stole the “life” have eaten the “heart,” he sickens at once, and will soon die.
I. A Witch Sweetheart.
A certain man loved a woman whom he expected to marry. He visited her regularly. Whenever he intended to visit her, he always notified her thus: “I will be coming such a day” or “such an hour.” Then she would say, “Yes.” But it happened on a particular day when he told her, “I’ll be coming to-night,” she said, “No, not to-night, wait till next night.” He replied, “No, for I will come to-night.” But she refused, “No, I do not want you to come to-night.” Then he asked, “What is your objection? Hitherto you have let me come when I pleased. What is the matter to-night?” So she said, “I do not want you to come, because I will be absent to-night.” “Where are you going?” he asked. To this she gave as answer only, “Don’t come! I don’t want you to come!” So the man said, “All right! I will not come. If you don’t want me, then I’m not coming.” So he left her, very much surprised at what she had said, and began to think something was going wrong; he thought he would like to know for himself what it was.
This woman was one of those who belonged to the Witch Society, and engaged in its plays. But the man had not suspected this, and did not know that she was one of those who played.
The native belief is that when a witch or wizard has seized some one to “eat” his “life” or do him other harm, if there be a non-society witness hidden or in the open, the odor of that witness weakens the witch power, and the attempt at witchcraft fails.