One, To Me, Grandly Tragic Instance
Of This I Learnt At Opobo.
There was a very great Fetish doctor
there, universally admired and trusted, who lived out on the land at
the mouth of the Great River.
One day he himself fell sick, and he
made ju-ju against the sickness; but it held on, and he grew worse.
He made more ju-ju of greater power, but again in vain, and then he
made the greatest ju-ju man can make, and it availed nought, and he
knew he was dying; and so, with his remaining strength, he broke up
and dishonoured and destroyed all the Fetishes in which the spirits
lived, and cast them out into the surf and died like a man.
Then horror came upon the people when they knew he had done this,
and they burnt his house and all things belonging to him, and cried
upon the spirits not to forsake them, not to lay this one man's
deadly sin at their doors.
In connection with the gods of West Africa I may remark that in
almost all the series of native tradition there, you will find
accounts of a time when there was direct intercourse between the
gods or spirits that live in the sky, and men. That intercourse is
always said to have been cut off by some human error; for example,
the Fernando Po people say that once upon a time there was no
trouble or serious disturbance upon earth because there was a
ladder, made like the one you get palm-nuts with, "only long, long;"
and this ladder reached from earth to heaven so the gods could go up
and down it and attend personally to mundane affairs. But one day a
cripple boy started to go up the ladder, and he had got a long way
up when his mother saw him, and went up in pursuit. The gods,
horrified at the prospect of having boys and women invading heaven,
threw down the ladder, and have since left humanity severely alone.
The Timneh people, north-east of Sierra Leone, say that in old times
God was very friendly with men, and when He thought a man had lived
long enough on earth, He sent a messenger to him telling him to come
up into the sky, and stay with Him; but once there was a man who,
when the messenger of God came, did not want to leave his wives, his
slaves, and his riches, and so the messenger had to go back without
him; and God was very cross and sent another messenger for him, who
was called Disease, but the man would not come for him either, and
so Disease sent back word to God that he must have help to bring the
man; and so God sent another messenger whose name was Death; and
Disease and Death together got hold of the man, and took him to God;
and God said in future He would always send these messengers to
fetch men.
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