Then, After Certain Ceremonies,
She Is Free To Marry Again.
So I conclude the period of mourning,
in all tribes, is that period during which the soul remains round
its old possessions, whether these tribes have a definite soul-
burial or devil-making or not.
The ideas connected with the under-world to which the ghost goes are
exceedingly interesting. The Negroes and Bantus are at one on these
subjects in one particular only, and that is that no marriages take
place there. The Tschwis say that this under-world, Srahmandazi, is
just the same as this world in all other particulars, save that it
is dimmer, a veritable shadow-land where men have not the joys of
life, but only the shadow of the joy. Hence, says the Tschwi
proverb, "One day in this world is worth a year in Srahmandazi."
The Tschwis, with their usual definiteness in this sort of detail,
know all about their Srahmandazi. Its entrance is just east of the
middle Volta, and the way down is difficult to follow, and when the
sun sets on this world it rises on Srahmandazi. The Bantus are
vague on this important and interesting point. The Benga, for
example, although holding the absence of marriage there, do not take
steps to meet the case as the Tschwis do, and kill a supply of wives
to take down with them. This reason for killing wives at a funeral
is another instance that, however strange and cruel a custom may be
here in West Africa, however much it may at first appear to be the
flower of a rootless superstition, you will find on close
investigation that it has some root in a religious idea, and a
common-sense element. The common-sense element in the killing of
wives and slaves among both the Tschwi and the Calabar tribes
consists in the fact that it discourages poisoning. A Calabar chief
elaborately explained to me that the rigorous putting down of
killing at funerals that was being carried on by the Government not
only landed a man in the next world as a wretched pauper, but added
an additional chance to his going there prematurely, for his wives
and slaves, no longer restrained by the prospect of being killed at
his death and sent off with him would, on very slight aggravation,
put "bush in his chop." It is sad to think of this thorn being
added to the rose-leaves of a West Coast chief's life, as there are
99.9 per cent. of thorns in it already.
I came across a similar case on the Gold Coast, when a chief
complained to me of the way the Government were preserving vermin,
in the shape of witches, in the districts under its surveillance.
You were no longer allowed to destroy them as of old, and therefore
the vermin were destroying the game; for, said he, the witches here
live almost entirely on the blood they suck from children at night.
They used, in old days, to do this furtively, and do so now where
native custom is unchecked; but in districts where the Government
says that witchcraft is utter nonsense, and killing its proficients
utter murder which will be dealt with accordingly, the witch
flourishes exceedingly, and blackmails the fathers and mothers of
families, threatening that if they are not bought off they will have
their child's blood; and if they are not paid, the child dies away
gradually - poison again, most likely.
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