Very Little Is Known By Outsiders Regarding Egbo Compared To What
There Must Be To Be Known, Owing To A
Want of interest or to a sense
of inability on the part of most white people to make head or
Tail
out of what seems to them a horrid pagan practice or a farrago of
nonsense.
It is still a great power, although its officials in Duke or Creek
Town are no longer allowed to go chopping and whipping promiscuous-
like, because the Consul-General has a prejudice against this sort
of thing, and the Effik is learning that it is nearly as unhealthy
to go against his Consul-General as against his ju-ju. So I do not
believe you will ever get the truth about it in Duke Town, or Creek
Town. If you want to get hold of the underlying idea of these
societies you must go round out-of-the-way corners where the natives
are not yet afraid of being laughed at or punished.
Of the South-West Coast secret societies the Ukuku seems the most
powerful. The Isyogo belonging to those indolent Igalwas, and
M'pongwe is now little more than a play. You pretty frequently come
upon Isyogo dances just round Libreville. You will see stretched
across the little street in a cluster of houses, a line from which
branches are suspended, making a sort of screen. The women and
children keep one side of this screen, the men dancing on the other
side to the peculiar monotonous Isyogo tune.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 502 of 705
Words from 138627 to 138882
of 194943
