Well, Round The Bark Hut, With The Widows Inside, There
Was Erected A Hut Made Of Branches, And When This
Was nearly
completed, the Fans commenced pulling down the inner bark hut, and
finally cleared it right out, thatch and
All, and the materials of
which it had been made were burnt. I was struck with the
performance because the Fans, though surrounded by intensely
superstitious tribes, are remarkably free from superstition {338}
themselves, taking little or no interest in speculative matters,
except to get charms to make them invisible to elephants, to keep
their feet in the path, to enable them to see things in the forest,
and practical things of that sort, and these charms they frequently
gave me to assist and guard me in my wanderings.
The M'pongwe and Igalwa have a peculiar funeral custom, but it is
not confined in its operation to widows, all the near relatives
sharing in it. The mourning relations are seated on the floor of
the house, and some friend - Dr. Nassau told me he was called in in
this capacity - comes in and "lifts them up," bringing to them a
small present, a factor of which is always a piece of soap. This
custom is now getting into the survival form in Libreville and
Glass. Nowadays the relatives do not thus sit, unwashed and
unkempt, keenly requiring the soap. Among the bush Igalwa, I am
told, the soap is much wanted.
It is not only the widows that remain, either theoretically or
practically unwashed; all the mourners do. The Ibibios seem to me
to wear the deepest crape in the form of accumulated dirt, and all
the African tribes I have met have peculiar forms of hair cutting -
shaving the entire head, not shaving it at all, shaving half of it,
etc. - when in mourning. The period of the duration of wearing
mourning is, I believe, in all West Coast tribes that which elapses
between the death and the burial of the soul. I believe a more
thorough knowledge would show us that there is among the Bantu also
a fixed time for the lingering of the soul on earth after death, but
we have not got sufficient evidence on the point yet. The only
thing we know is that it is not proper for the widow to re-marry
while her husband's soul is still in her vicinity.
Among the Calabar tribes the burial of his spirit liberates the
woman. Among the Tschwi she requires special ceremonies on her own
account. In Togoland, among the Ewe people, I know the period is
between five and six weeks, during which time the widow remains in
the hut, armed with a good stout stick, as a precaution against the
ghost of her husband, so as to ward off attacks should he be ill-
tempered. After these six weeks the widow can come out of the hut,
but as his ghost has not permanently gone hence, and is apt to
revisit the neighbourhood for the next six months, she has to be
taken care of during this period.
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