He Lives In The Forest, In Or Under Those Great Silk-Cotton Trees
Around The Roots Of Which The Earth Is Red.
This coloured earth
identifies a silk-cotton tree as being the residence of a
Sasabonsum, as its colour is held to arise from the blood it whips
off him as he goes down to his under-world home after a night's
carnage.
All silk-cotton trees are suspected because they are held
to be the roosts for Duppies. But the red earth ones are feared
with a great fear, and no one makes a path by them, or a camp near
them at night.
Sasabonsum is a friend of witches. He is of enormous size, and of a
red colour. He wears his hair straight and he waylays unprotected
wayfarers in the forest at night, and in all districts except that
of Apollonia he eats them. Round Apollonia he only sucks their
blood. Natives of this district after meeting him have crawled home
and given an account of his appearance, and then expired.
Ellis says he is believed to be implacable, and when angered can
never be mollified or propitiated, but it is certain that human
victims are constantly sacrificed to him in districts beyond white
control; in districts under it, the equivalent value of a human
sacrifice in sheep and goats is offered to him. In Ashantee he has
priests, and of course human sacrifice. Away among the Dahomeyan
tribes - where he has kept his habits but got another name, and seems
to have crystallised from a class into an individual - the usual way
in which a god develops - he has priests and priestesses, and they
are holy terrors; but among the Tschwi, Sasabonsum is mainly dealt
with by witches, and people desirous of possessing the power of
becoming witches.
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