Surrounded by spirits—The soul leaves the body—Dreams—Bewitching folk—Losing one’s shadow—Disembodied spirits or ghosts—Ghosts enter animals—Deceiving the ghosts—Spirits of disease—Spirit of wealth—Spirits of crocodiles—Leopards—Spirits of unborn babes—Monsters on the islands—Forest sprites—Cloud-land folk—Spirits in spears—In canoes—In trees.

The Boloki folk believe they are surrounded by spirits which try to thwart them at every twist and turn, and to harm them every hour of the day and night. The rivers and creeks are crowded with the spirits of their ancestors, and the forests and bush are full also of spirits, ever seeking to injure the living who are overtaken by night when travelling by road or canoe. I never met among them a man daring enough to go at night through the forest that divided Monsembe from the upper villages, even though a large reward was offered. Their invariable reply was: “There are too many spirits in the bush and forest.”

In the following pages I shall attempt to give, as succinctly as possible, an account of the various spirits that trouble the Boloki world, their powers and their limitations. The information has been gathered from various natives in conversation around their fires, or from talks when travelling with them by canoe and boat; and may be accepted as reflecting the native opinion respecting those spirits by which they suppose themselves to be surrounded.

The embodied spirit or soul (elimo) is dreaded almost as much as the other spirits. In dreams the soul visits various scenes, and no matter how quickly the dreamer is aroused the soul can always return in time to take its place in the awakened person. With regard to dreams, some of the natives believe in them, and bad dreams are often accepted as omens to warn them against going on journeys, and fishing and hunting expeditions that would be either fruitless or disastrous.

When a person faints, or becomes unconscious, massage with water is used, and on the patient reviving it is said that the soul has returned. The soul travels about to bewitch people, and some of their charms are made on purpose to destroy such wandering spirits. These wicked souls travelling about with such sinister motives are regarded as witches worthy only of death, and some of their witch-doctors reap a rich harvest in trying to kill them. A seriously sick person fancies he sees a relative or neighbour in a dream, and at once believes that the witch-soul of his relative has come to throttle the life out of him, so he pays a witch-doctor a goodly fee to kill the prowling spirit, or protect him from its malignant assaults.

I noticed that the mouths and nostrils of the recently dead were always plugged and tied, and to my questions on the subject I always received the same reply: “The soul of a dying man escapes by his mouth and nose, so we always tie them in that fashion to keep the spirit, as long as possible, in the body.”

The shadow of a person, his reflection in water, or in a looking-glass, and more recently a photograph, is called by a word (elilingi) that is often used interchangeably with the word for soul (elimo). They repeatedly informed me that a “dead person casts no shadow,” and that therefore he has no soul, hence to say that So-and-so has no shadow is, with them, equivalent to saying that he has no soul, i.e. that he is dead. These two words were frequently employed when speaking of the soul, and also of the shadow of a person; but the word for soul (elimo) is never used for the shadow of a tree, house, animal, etc., but they speak of a fallen house or a fallen tree as having no shadow, i.e. they cast no shadows—a sign that they are dead.

If for some reason a man does not see his shadow reflected when he looks into some water, he thinks someone has taken his spirit away, and that he will soon die. Even if at midday he does not see his shadow, because he is standing on it—the sun being absolutely vertical at noon so near the Equator—he will go to a witch-doctor, who will make medicine that he may recover his shadow or soul. I once asked a chief to sit for his photograph a second time, and he laughingly refused, on the ground that I had sent his soul once to the white man’s country, and he could not let me have it again. And it was a considerable time before he consented to sit again.

The most troublesome spirit, however, with which the native has to contend is the disembodied spirit (mongoli). Directly the soul (elimo) leaves the body it becomes a disembodied spirit (a mongoli), and this distinction should be carefully borne in mind.

It is generally believed that the disembodied spirit of a good man—good according to the native code of morals—remains in the nether world (longa); but that of a bad man is punished in the nether regions and driven out. Then if the spirit belongs to a member of a bush-tribe (or to one whose family originally came from the bush), it will inhabit the forests or bush-lands, and unless properly appeased by gifts or conquered by charms it will turn aside animals from the hunting-traps and try to spoil all hunting operations. If the spirit belongs to a member of a riverine tribe, then, after being turned out of the nether world, it haunts the river and creeks and endeavours to hinder successful fishing. Hence it is no uncommon thing, when a village fails in its fishing, for the inhabitants to join their brass rods together to buy an old man or old woman—old and therefore cheap—and throw him (or her) into the river to conciliate the water-spirits. Hence, also, all the care taken by a fisherman to conceal his name while fishing under the general term mwele,^[37] lest the disembodied spirit of an enemy should hear it and, recognizing him, keep all the fish from his traps and nets.

Sometimes these spirits can be heard walking through the forests, and the noise they make is called bie-bie; and at times they visit the town and cause “a rustling in the grass roofs, as though searching for a place through which to drive their spears.” The land and water are full of these disembodied spirits, hence the timorous folk are afraid to travel by night. Certain witch-doctors can see these spirits, and when they are mischievous they pretend to capture them and secure them in saucepans and calabashes.

Men may become the mediums by which these spirits hold communication with the living, generally to the advantage of the medium, as the following incident will illustrate: Baloli, the head-man of his family, died, and was buried in the usual way. Some time afterwards his younger brother, Mangumbe, became subject to frenzies, during which his brother Bololi spoke his oracles through him. Mangumbe admired and coveted the wives of a certain man in his town and tried to buy them, and failing in that he desired to exchange others for them, but their husband refused all offers.

One day Mangumbe worked himself into a frenzy, and when he was supposed to be under the influence of his brother’s spirit he said that a certain man (giving the name of the man whose wives he coveted) must get rid of his wives or they would cause his death by a serious and fatal illness. Then Mangumbe went to a friend and told him to treat with the husband for the wives. The husband, now thoroughly afraid of his wives, was quite willing to sell them at a cheaper price than Mangumbe had previously offered for them. By this cunning trick he became the owner of the women he wanted.

On one occasion Mangumbe wanted to buy my arm-chair. I told him the price as a bit of information, as I had no intention of selling the chair. He doubted my word. I told him that I had heard that he held communication with his brother’s spirit, and if he wanted to know the price of goods in England he had better ask his brother’s spirit to go there, learn all it could, and come back and inform him of the prices of the various articles. Mangumbe shook his head sadly and said: “His spirit cannot travel so far, it keeps just around this district only.”

The people firmly believed that Mangumbe held counsel with his brother’s spirit, and when he acted as a medium they were quite willing to accept all that he said. Ordinarily he was little respected by the people; he was of mean appearance and of petty, shabby ways, and had no command even over his own people, and yet when acting as a medium in a séance he was feared, obeyed, and his word received without the slightest demur.

When a spirit is speaking through a person, who is usually a member of the disembodied spirit’s family, the medium does not always talk in the language of the present day, but in the archaic language known only to the old people. When the medium is a youngish man, i.e. one not familiar with the ancient language, he then expresses his oracles in the ordinary speech, but with sufficient of the archaic forms to lend mystery to the communication.

I have seen the medium work himself into a frenzy, shout, tremble all over, his muscles quiver, his body undulates, perspiration breaks out on his forehead, and foam gathers about his mouth, and his eyes roll; and when thoroughly under the spell of the spirit he gives utterance to oracles that are implicitly believed by the people. All these séances are performed in the open and in broad daylight, the medium sometimes sitting alone in the centre of a crowd; but when much agitated and swaying considerably, he has one or two of his wives near to catch him should he fall.

Sometimes one of these spirits takes possession of a hippopotamus and visits the towns on the river-banks, and when that occurs the family to whom the spirit is supposed to belong puts a small saucepan of sugar-cane wine and a little food for its refreshment on its nightly visit; and as the food and wine are both gone in the morning (there are plenty of dogs about), the natives assured me that the spirit in the animal had partaken of them. The spirit also, at times, enters a crocodile and visits a town; but the hippopotamus is the more common form.

On one occasion a hippopotamus came off our beach for a few nights. I could only hear it, as it was too dark to see it; but on the chance of wounding it fatally I fired in the direction of the sound. I fired on two successive nights, and during the next day some natives came and told me that that particular hippopotamus was possessed by the spirit of a member of such and such a family, and that the said spirit had sent a message to the head of the family, telling him that he was to inform me that I should only waste my bullets as it was impossible to kill a spirit-possessed hippopotamus, and asking him to request me not to fire again, as he (the hippopotamus) only wanted to visit the town peaceably for his offering of sugar-cane wine and food.

I told them that I would have another shot or two; but they assured me that I should not hit it. They did not doubt my marksmanship, as they had seen me bring down many birds on the wing, and they knew that I scarcely ever went to shoot monkeys and guinea-fowls without bringing one or more back with me. They did not doubt my skill with the gun, but they doubted the power of a bullet to kill a spirit-possessed animal.

The hippopotamus, however, never came again, consequently I had no further opportunity of testing the point at issue. I was much interested in learning from this incident that spirits not only took possession of hippopotami, but could thus communicate with their living relatives.

According to the native idea these spirits (mingoli) are everywhere, and are ever ready to pounce on any living person, and either carry him away captive or inflict a disease on him, or kill him; consequently his life is one long drawn-out fear of what the spirits may next do to him; and his many witch-doctors, fetishes, and ceremonies are to control, appease, circumvent, and perhaps conquer the spirits. The spirit of a deceased enemy can inflict an illness on a family, a member of which had wronged him when in the body. Fortunately, these spirits are limited in the area of their operations and can be deceived. The witch-doctor can cork them up in calabashes, can cover them with saucepans, and when necessary, if the fee is large enough, he can destroy them.

A man I knew well was sick for a long time with some internal complaint, and after other means had failed to cure him he was told by a witch-doctor that he was troubled by a bad spirit, and he advised him to go right out of the district beyond the sphere of its operations and remain there until he was better. The man had no friends to whom he might have safely gone, so he left his house at dead of night, taking only two of his wives with him, and telling no one of his destination lest the spirit should hear it. He went as far as he safely could from his own town and donned a woman’s dress, and assuming a woman’s voice he pretended to be other than he was, in order to deceive the spirit should it search for him.

This also failed to cure him, and in time he returned to his town, but continued to dress and speak as a woman, and every time he ate or drank he first scattered a portion of his food and drink behind him for the spirit to eat, and eating be appeased. The food best liked by these spirits is the heart of any animal, but it must be boiled, minced, and mixed with cassava.

The witch-doctor can see the disembodied spirits, and those persons who have the occult power (called likundu) can also see them. The natives tell me that these spirits are like people in appearance—they come into view, pass, and are lost to sight like ordinary beings. They have quiet voices, and eat monkey peppers (amomum), and drink sugar-cane wine; but if the stems of the monkey pepper are put across a path the spirits cannot pass over them. It is a curious belief that these spirits may eat the fruit of the monkey pepper, and yet cannot step over the stalks of the same plant. On the Lower Congo red peppers are used for the same purpose of blocking a road to spirits; and in ancient Britain the red holly berries were used for keeping evil spirits out of the huts and houses of those who feared them.

There are indications that the sight of the spirit is very defective, but its hearing is very keen, consequently a man’s name is never mentioned while he is fishing, for fear the spirits will hear and turn the fish from his traps. One would think that if the spirits can see and recognize a fish they could also recognize a fisherman; but there are many gaps in native logic.

As the spirit of a bush-man is supposed to wander in the bush after leaving the nether world, any human offering made to appease it is buried on the edge of the forest; but an offering to the spirit of a riverine man is thrown into the water.

These offerings are made with the object of gaining the good-will of a father or grandfather; but there is no ancestral worship, as beyond the fourth generation the ancestors are forgotten, or are regarded as being ineffective in their anger. There is no regularity in these offerings, but they are made when other means have failed to avert a calamity, such as the flooding of a river, or to ensure a positive good, such as a large catch of fish.

A homicide is not afraid of the spirit of the man he has killed when the slain man belongs to any of the neighbouring towns, as disembodied spirits travel in a very limited area only; but when he kills a man belonging to his own town he is filled with fear lest the spirit shall do him some harm. There are no special rites that he can observe to free himself from these fears, but he mourns for the slain man as though he were a member of his own family. He neglects his personal appearance, shaves his head, fasts for a certain period, and laments with much weeping.

Abnormal events are often placed to the credit of the spirit of a man recently deceased. A few hours after the death of a young man whom I knew a furious storm broke on the town, blowing down plantain trees and working great havoc in the farms. It was stated in all seriousness by the folk that the storm had been sent by Mopembe, the lad’s name. We had for dinner one day the shoulder of an antelope, the history of which will further illustrate the above statement: Three days before we had that piece of antelope on our table, Mumbamba, an old head-man, died. After his death his relatives came from various towns to mourn at his grave. On the morning of our antelope dinner three canoes of men and women were coming up-river, with the object of expressing their grief at the grave, when they happened upon a large antelope caught in the grass of an islet that had lodged against a fallen tree in the river. The mourners killed the antelope, dragged it into the canoe, and gave Mumbamba the credit of sending them an antelope to eat as an expression of his favour; thus spirits can send good as well as evil upon those who are left on the earth.

We find, then, among the Boloki three words for soul, spirit, and ghost. The first, elimo, is the embodied soul that is able to leave the body during sleep, it visits people and places in dreams, travels about, and performs actions, as throttling an enemy. This, I believe, is the only word they have for soul. There is then the elilingi, a shadow, shade, reflection that a dead man, or dead thing, does not possess, and a living man can lose and have restored by a witch-doctor, and this word is also used in a restricted sense as being synonymous with elimo. And, lastly, there is mongoli, a disembodied soul, a spirit, a ghost of the bush, forest, and water that sends evil and good upon the living—more often evil than good—which it is necessary to appease with offerings of food, of trade goods, and of human beings.

The natives are subject to various serious sicknesses which they think are caused by spirits, and each sickness has its own spirit (or bwete, plural, mēte), hence the native names^[38] for debility, anæmia, rheumatism, sciatica, ague fevers, and sleeping-sickness are not only the names of diseases, but really denote the names of those spirits responsible for sending them. They cannot tell me from whence these spirits emanate, but the only means of luring them out of the body of the patient is to set up for some of them specially prepared posts, for others a saucepan of small sticks, and again for others a saucepan of medicine water.

For debility, rheumatism, sciatica, and ague they erect a post (called etoli) about 4 feet long, peeled of its bark, shaped to a point at one end, and daubed with yellow pigment; this is marked with red and blue spots, and stuck upright in the ground with about 2 feet 6 inches showing. For the spirit of sleeping-sickness they prepare a saucepan in which they put small sticks, and the whole is decorated with yellow, red, and blue spots and stripes. For the spirit of another form of sleeping-sickness a saucepan of bush-water is prepared, and the pot ornamented with various colours. The saucepan of sticks is called muntoka, and that of the bush-water is called eboko. The latter is broken, as described in another chapter, by a badly treated slave, or an ill-used wife, to obtain redress for his or her wrongs.

These decorated fetish posts and saucepans often have little shelters built over them which are coloured with various paints, and every time the owner takes a meal he throws some of his food on the roof of his house for the spirits to eat. From time to time he pours sugar-cane wine over the posts, or into the saucepans. There is no ancestral worship in this, but an appeasing of the spirits of the diseases. Not to make these offerings is to invite a return of the spirit or spirits to the body of the owner, i.e. to have a relapse. I have known a man to have four of these posts and saucepans. This indicated that he had had several complaints, or had had his one and only complaint wrongly diagnosed. Persons who have never suffered from these serious illnesses, and they are numerous, never trouble to prepare either a saucepan or a post.

When there is much sickness in a family, not confined to one or two members only, but a kind of family epidemic, it is said to be caused by a spirit (named mweta) left, or sent, by a deceased relative as a punishment for failing to observe some fetish taboo, or for not having shown due respect for the deceased when he was buried by having a proper ceremony, or for not keeping his memory alive by occasional mimic fights on land or water, or by the gifts of brass rods and slaves. Sometimes the family is conscious that they have properly observed all these things, and then they know that their deceased relative has sent the spirit of family sickness maliciously, or through jealousy of their apparent prosperity.

These spirits, when they are troubling a family, can be driven into animals by the witch-doctor and killed by him; and as a proof of his prowess he will exhibit a bleeding head, and assure the family that they need no longer worry as he has killed the animal which was possessed by the spirit, and it is therefore punished, killed, and will not bother them again. Sometimes the witch-doctor will drive the spirit into a saucepan, or calabash, and either kill it or imprison it.

The Boloki man, like folk of other climes and colour, is not averse to wealth, so he has his spirit for giving wealth (called ejo). Now a man who desires to become rich pays a large fee to a certain kind of witch-doctor, who then uses his influence with the spirit on behalf of his client, who must in all future gains set apart a portion for it; but should he fail to do so, the spirit has power to punish him. The goods are given to the witch-doctor to pass on to the spirit.

This spirit can assume any shape it pleases, and entice a person down to the river, where it returns suddenly to its proper form and jumps into the river with the enticed person. This person is then either killed by the spirit, or held at ransom for a slave or his equivalent. How the ransom is paid no one could tell me, although I put the question to various natives at different times. The person thus enticed is he who has not paid his proper dues to the spirit.

When a person has received the medicine or charm of this spirit, and has become wealthy by its luck-giving power, he takes the nail-parings and hair-cuttings^[39] of a woman and makes medicine with them; the woman then quickly dies, and her spirit goes to the wealth-giving spirit as an offering for its help. He is said to pass her on as a gift to the spirit of wealth. If a man is saved, when a canoe is swamped and his companions are all drowned, he is regarded as having given them to the spirit (ejo) to save his own life. Should a man be successful in fishing or trading without any apparent reason, and shortly after his success his wife falls ill and dies, he is said to have given his wife to this spirit as an acknowledgment of his increased wealth. The ordeal is often administered to prove or disprove these accusations; but marvellous stories are told about the wealth-giving power of this spirit, and as only rich men can afford to pay the fee to the witch-doctor in the first instance, the fact of their wealth fosters the superstition.

That some men are stronger than others in wrestling, and able to overcome those who try to hold them, is well recognized by the natives, but instead of its being an indication of greater strength and fitness it is placed to the credit of a spirit (called embanda). When this spirit takes possession of a man it enables him to throw his enemy; it strengthens the legs of its possessor, and weakens by pain the legs of its owner’s opponent. He who possesses this spirit is always successful in capturing one or more prisoners in a fight, and can cause the death of many members of any family he hates.

The word jando stands for the peculiar characteristics of the animal to which it is prefixed, i.e. a man successful in fishing is said to have the peculiarities of a crocodile, for this creature is regarded as being quick in catching fish; and a person swift and cunning in fight and flight has the qualities of a leopard. These qualities or spirits are not gained by eating either of these creatures, but are procured, for a few, from the witch-doctor by some occult intercourse with the crocodile and leopard. It is also affirmed by the natives that a person can become so possessed by the spirit (jando) of a crocodile or of a leopard that he will let himself loose occasionally on his neighbours, and thus preying in spirit on them many will die.

One of the functions of the disembodied spirits is to supply certain places in the forests, or trees, or creeks with the spirits that are to enter unborn children. These spirits of unborn children (called bingbongbo) can make boys and girls thin and weak, but are to be appeased by the proper kind of medicine man preparing a suitable feast for them. These spirits are supposed to crowd the pools in the forests, the shallow ponds on the islands, the many creeks of the river, and even to people the great bombax trees to be found here and there along the river’s bank. Every family has its own special preserves (called liboma) where the spirits are waiting for bodies in which to appear as babies.

Next to the spirits in the terror they cause to the natives is a mythical monster (engenenge) inhabiting the islands. He is represented as having many heads and no body, and is greatly dreaded by those who have to camp on the islands during fishing and travelling; and the natives tell many stories of visits they have received from him. Next to this many-headed monster is a mythical person or spirit (named nyandembe) who is mentioned in the folk-lore stories as having caused the death of Libanza’s father, but was eventually killed by him as a punishment. He is thought by the natives to have been very strong and rich; but being dead he is no longer feared.

There is a race of folk who live somewhere above, as the word indicates (ba = people, and likolo = above), but up-river and all the country east of them is also called likolo; and it is most probable that the word likolo in the above phrase had originally that meaning, but as the natives pushed their journeys higher and higher up the river and heard of peoples like themselves still higher up, they removed the balikolo from a locality beyond their district to a place above them in the sky.

These Cloud-folk are said to have tails, and are very fond of ripe plantains, and in the folk-lore stories they descend on the banana farms solely to eat and carry off the ripe fruit. There is a legend that the Boloki people bought their first fire^[40] from the Cloud-folk in exchange for a young woman. Previously to that “we cooked our food in the sun, or ate it quite raw.” These Cloud-land folk are not regarded as spirits, but the natives always speak of them as a great nuisance, and as something uncanny and in possession of supernatural power.

There is a class of supernatural beings that inhabits the forest and bush (named baijamba = people of the bush). They are often appealed to in the folk stories to decide what a person should or should not eat; and also to judge on a point of etiquette or custom. They are not looked upon with much dread, and no one speaks of them as having done any harm to the folk who visit the forests. They seem to be friendly spirits, or sprites, that are always at hand when wanted, and they just as readily give their verdict in favour of a mean trick as support a ruse to outwit the meanness.

When a man is under the sway of the disembodied spirit he takes his spear and, tying some dried plantain leaves to it, he holds it before him with his left hand; and as he trembles with the excitement of the spirits in him the spear shakes and rustles the leaves until the spirits go out of him into the spear, and it then becomes a fetish spear and his luck is bound up in it. This spear, henceforth, may not be touched by anyone but himself, and it is carefully guarded by its owner, for to lose it is to fail in all his undertakings. These spirits are passed into hunting-spears, fighting-spears, and fish-spears, and although they are especially effectual in their own particular line, they also have a general influence on the man’s luck. It is also asserted that a rich man who has the spirit of wealth (ejo) passes that spirit into his canoe, and this enables him to make successful trading expeditions and other journeys to his own advantage.

I found only one tree that is supposed to have a spirit, and that is the tree used for ordeal purposes. When a person wants to take the rootlets of the ordeal tree (nka), he first selects the tree, then spreads a leaf on the closed fist of his left hand, and strikes it with the palm of his right hand. If the leaves on the tree tremble in response, he knows the tree is strong and fit to use; but if they remain quiescent, it is a sign that the ordeal property (nka) is weak and unfit for its purpose, so another tree is sought, until he finds one that responds in sympathy to the striking of the leaf.

The life of the native, surrounded as he is by all these various spirits, would be intolerable, unthinkably so, were it not for his many witch-doctors, who have power to control the spirits, and even kill them, and his many charms that protect him from their many malignant designs, or enlist their power on behalf of the wearers and users of them. Which came first—a belief in the spirits, or the witch-doctors to circumvent them? I am disposed to think that the witch-doctors are largely responsible for the creation of these various spirits to account for their numerous failures in warding off sickness and death. With these witch-doctors, however, we must deal in another chapter.