“Prayer is the ordinary concomitant of sacrifice; the worshipper explains the reason of the gift, and urges the deity to accept it and to grant the help that is needed. The prayers of the earliest stage are offered on emergencies, and often appear to be intended to attract the attention of the god who may be engaged in another direction. The requests they contain are of the most primary sort. Food is asked for, success in hunting or fishing, strength of arm, rain, a good harvest, children, and so forth. They have a ring of urgency; they state the claims the worshipper has on the god, and mention his former offerings as well as the present one; they praise the power and the past acts of the deity, and adjure him by his whole relationship to his people (and also to his enemies) to grant their requests.”[41]
Fetich prayer may be and is offered without restriction by any one, young or old, male or female; but to my knowledge it is seldom used by the young. A very intelligent woman, a member of my Batanga church, tells me that when she was a child she possessed a fetich supposed to be very valuable, which she had inherited from her father. She says that when she would be going into the forest or where she expected difficulty or danger or trouble or was anxious for success, she would hold the fetich in her hand, and with eye and thought directed toward it and the spirit it was supposed to contain, would utter a short petition for aid and protection.
But practically formal prayer is rarely made. Ejaculatory prayer, however, is made constantly, in the uttering of cabalistic words, phrases, or sentences adopted by or assigned to almost every one by parent or doctor. They are uttered by all ages and both sexes at any time, as a defence from evil, on all sorts of occasions,—e. g., when one sneezes, stumbles, or is otherwise startled, etc.
The prayers which I have heard were of adults. On a journey, about 1876, stopping for a night in a village on the Ogowe River, I saw the venerable chief stand out in the open street. He addressed the spirits of the air, begging them, “Come not to my town!” He recounted his good deeds—praising himself as just, honest, and kind to his neighbors—as reason why no evil should befall him, and closed with an impassioned appeal to the spirits to stay away.
At another time, about 1879, in another Ogowe village, where a man’s son had been wounded, and a bleeding artery which had been successfully closed had just broken open again, and the hemorrhage, if not promptly checked, would probably be fatal, the father ran out of the hut, wildly gesticulating towards the sky, saying, “Go away! go away! O ye spirits! why do you come to kill my son?” And he continued for some time in a strain of alternate pleading and protestation.
In another case I saw a woman who rushed into the street objurgating the spirits, and in the next breath humbly supplicating them, who, she said, were vexing her child that was lying in convulsions.
Observe that while these were distinctly prayers, appeals for mercy, pathetic, agonizing protestations, there was no praise, no love, no thanks, no confession of sin,—only a long, pitiful deprecation of evil.
There are also prayers of blessing. Parents in farewells to their children, or a chief to his parting guest, or any grateful recipient of a valued gift, will take the head or hand of the child, guest, or donor, and saying, “Ibâtâ!” (blessing), or adding a cabalistic ejaculation, will sometimes “blow” a blessing. From this custom has arisen the statement in some books of travel that it was an African mode of honoring a guest to spit on his hand. It is true that the sudden and violent expulsion of the breath in “blowing” the “Ibâtâ” from the tip of the tongue is apt to be followed by an ejection of more or less saliva, but the kernel of the custom lies in the prayer of blessing accompanying the act.
In auguries made by the mfumu, or witch-doctor, among the Wanyamwezi, “the mfumu holds a kind of religious service; he begins by addressing the spirits of their forefathers, imploring them not to visit their anger upon their descendants. This prayer he offers up kneeling, bowing and bending to the ground from time to time. Then he rises, and commences a hymn of praise to the ancestors, and all join in the chorus. Then, seizing his little gourds, he executes a pas seul, after which he bursts out into song again, but this time singing as one inspired.”[42]
3. The third mode of worship has been already mentioned in a previous chapter, viz., the use of charms or fetiches. This is the mode most frequently used; and to the descriptions of their forms of preparation and manner, universality, and the various effects of their use, the following chapters are devoted.