The Fernando Po Legend May Be Taken As Fairly Pure African, But The
Timneh, I Expect, Is A Transmogrified Arabic
Story - though I do not
know of anything like it among Arabic stories; but they are infinite
in quantity, and
There is a certain ring about it I recognise, and
these Timnehs are much in contact with the Mohammedan, Mandingoes,
etc. In none of the African stories is there given anything like
the importance to dreams that there is given to attempts to account
for accidents and death; and surely it must have been more
impressive and important to a man to have got his leg or arm snapped
off by a crocodile in the river, or by a shark in the surf, or to
have got half killed, or have seen a friend killed by a falling tree
in the forest in the day time, than to have experienced the most
wonderful of dreams. He sees that however terrific his dream-
experiences may have been, he was not much the worse for them. Not
so in the other case, a limb gone or a life gone is more impressive,
and more necessary to account for.
No trace of sun-worship have I ever found. The firmament is, I
believe, always the great indifferent and neglected god, the Nyan
Kupon of the Tschwi, and the Anzambe, Nzam, etc., of the Bantu
races. The African thinks this god has great power if he would only
exert it, and when things go very badly with him, when the river
rises higher than usual and sweeps away his home and his
plantations; when the smallpox stalks through the land, and day and
night the corpses float down the river past him, and he finds them
jammed among his canoes that are tied to the beach, and choking up
his fish traps; and then when at last the death-wail over its
victims goes up night and day from his own village, he will rise up
and call upon this great god in a terror maddened by despair, that
he may hear and restrain the evil workings of these lesser devils;
but he evidently finds, as Peer Gynt says, "Nein, er hort nicht. Er
ist taub wie gewohnlich" for there is no organised cult for Anzam.
Accounts of apparitions abound in all the West Coast districts, and
although the African holds them all in high horror and terror, he
does not see anything supernatural in his "Duppy." It is a horrid
thing to happen on, but there is nothing strange about it, and he is
ten thousand times more frightened than puzzled over the affair. He
does not want to "investigate" to see whether there is anything in
it. He wants to get clear away, and make ju-ju against it, "one
time."
These apparitions have a great variety of form, for, firstly, there
are all the true spirits, nature spirits; secondly, the spirits of
human beings - these human spirits are held to exist before as well
as during and after bodily life; thirdly, the spirits of things.
Probably the most horrid of class one is the Tschwi's Sasabonsum.
Whether Sasabonsum is an individual or a class is not quite clear,
but I believe he is a class of spirits, each individual of which has
the same characteristics, the same manner of showing anger, the same
personal appearance, and the same kind of residence.
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