This was no ghastly joke. I discussed the matter further, and asked a more intelligent companion whether he could really believe as he asserted. He replied that the man was not joking.
A lad, who was for some time a scholar at our school at Underhill Station, died in his own town a month or two after leaving us. The people said that our Mr. Hughes had stolen the boy’s soul, and sent it away to the white man’s land to be converted into Krooboys to work for us.
The Ngombe people told us that once on the market near their town, some travellers halted to buy palm wine, and all the people heard a hoarse voice proceed from a tusk of ivory, ‘Give me a drink of wine, I am fearfully thirsty.’ Some wine was poured into the tusk, there was a sound of drinking, and after rest the travellers passed on. Everyone believed the story, but I could never see any one who was present. It was of course a spirit in transit to the coast.
Witch doctors are up to all manner of tricks in their wicked business. Sometimes they declare that a dead man is the witch, and will dig in the grave, and as they get near the corpse suddenly tell the people to get out of the way. The doctor is going to shoot the witch, then throwing down a little blood which he has secreted, he fires a gun and points triumphantly to the blood of the escaped witch.
One of our boys told us how he had helped to unmask one of these tricks. His mother was ill, and the doctor said that there was a witch in the ground under the head of the bed on which she slept. The people all went out of the house; but the boy, who was anxious to witness the destruction of the witch, begged to remain, and while the doctor was busy digging, he found a bundle under the bed, and took it out. It was the doctor’s charms, and among them he found the gizzard of a fowl full of blood. He took it to the chief, who examined it, and the doctor, discovering his loss, emerged to say that the witch had been too sharp for him; he was obliged to run away, the people were so angry with him for trying thus to deceive them. It might seem too much to believe that, once discovered, he would venture the same trick again; yet some time after he was sent to inquire as to the death of a man in the town, and declared that there were two witches, one he pointed out, the other was a dead man. He proceeded to dig up the dead witch, and the chief, remembering at once the old dodge of this very man, sent some one to fetch his bundle, which he was more carefully watching. There was another gizzard ready. This was too much for them. They seized the wretched man, and, breaking his arms and legs, threw him over the precipice, the fate intended for his victim.
There is a story which explains the cruelty of breaking the arms and legs. A man had been accused of witchcraft, and thrown down into the great chasm, a distance of over one hundred feet. He fell into some soft mud at the bottom, and was able the next day to return to the town. The people broke his arms and legs, to make sure of him, and threw him down again; and such is the rule now.
Witch stories without end there are, but they still leave unsolved the question, What is a witch? Some say a man who knows how to weave the spell; others that an evil spirit takes up its abode in a man to accomplish this; in either case, it is held to be an imperative duty to kill the men. The spirit world is either under the sea or in a dark forest land; but how the spirits live, and what they do, is not known, since no one has ever returned to tell the story. But ghouls and evil spirits are said to lurk about in the neighbourhood of graves and uncanny places.
There is a natural fear of death—the spirit world is an unknown land—but there is no apprehension of meeting Nzambi, nor is there a burden of sin.
There is a sense of right and wrong. To steal, to lie, or to commit other crimes is considered wrong, but only a wrong to those who suffer thereby—there is no thought of God in it.