Chapter VII: The Curse and Its Manifestations (2)

Thabu in Ukamba.—In Ukamba thahu is called thabu or makwa, and the popular attitude towards it is very similar to that existing in Kikuyu, but it does not appear to be such an important factor in the lives of the people, and for some reason or other does not seem to have reached such a high development. It is looked upon with awe, and people generally dislike to discuss it. The bulk of the elders can therefore only give one or two examples of it. They declare that the only people who can give much information are the atumia ya makwa (elders of makwa) and atumia ya ukuu (elders of ukuu), and these important people undoubtedly endeavour to envelop the beliefs in mystery.

The incidence of makwa or thabu does not appear to be nearly so frequent in Ukamba as it is in Kikuyu. The Kamba, in fact, sneer at the Kikuyu, and say they are full of makwa. Moreover, owing to the reticence of the Kamba on the subject, it is not easy to collect examples. Mr C. Dundas, who has assisted in this inquiry, had to pay a fee of a bullock for himself and a goat for his interpreter before he could get any information on the subject. These fees admitted him to the grade of mutumia ya ukuu. All inquiries, however, had to be conducted in a low tone, and no one was allowed to listen. The following are all that have been discovered up to date, but there is little doubt that others exist:

(1) On the death of a man the village is unclean and must be purified by the elders, and during the period of purification strict continence must be observed by all those resident in the village. If a man fails to observe this rule he will become afflicted with makwa; also the woman, providing she belongs to the village where the death has taken place. Moreover, if a daughter of the deceased who is living away from the village visits there within eleven days of the death of her father, she will become afflicted.

The curse is removed in the same way in either of the above cases. A brother of the deceased must first cohabit with his wife. He then brings a goat and the afflicted person brings some beer. One of the elders then collects twigs of the movu, mulale, and muteme bushes; these are pounded up with water, and the mixture is called ngnondu. Some of the ngnondu is poured down the goat’s throat, the idea probably being to purify the animal ceremonially. The patient then walks three times round the goat, and the animal is lifted up by the elders. Its throat is cut and the blood spurts over the patient’s head and body. A piece of stick is then placed under his left arm and another between the toes of his right foot; two elders take hold of each of these sticks and pull them away saying, “We purify you.” The belief is possibly that by some magical process the defilement is passed into the sticks. Subsequently the brother of the deceased again cohabits with the same wife, and the patient is then cured.

(2) A man may not lie on his mother’s bed, or even take any articles from it, without becoming makwa. Upon the death of his father he inherits, and is then entitled to use, his father’s bed, which was, of course, also occupied by his mother, and it is therefore necessary that he should be protected from any evil which may come from this. So the elders make a mixture called ngnondu, and smear the soles of his feet with it; they also sprinkle the framework of the bed. They say that if this were not done the son would become makwa if he even put his foot on the bed. If a son becomes makwa through transgressing this law before his father’s death, he has to be purified as in the previous case. It is suspected that this prohibition was devised as a safeguard against incest, but if the theory is correct the natives seem to have forgotten the reason. A man, moreover, may not sit on his brother-in-law’s bed without incurring thabu.

Reference is invited to the author’s work on the “Ethnology of the A-Kamba” (Camb. Press), p. 65, discussing the danger to a girl if a stranger touches her menstrual blood; this is a clear case of makwa, which falls on the girl in consequence.

Some of the prohibitions mentioned on p. 102 op. cit. are also cases of makwa, and on p. 97 op. cit. there is an account of a man who was suffering from thabu or makwa. At the time, unfortunately, the importance of the phenomena had not been fully recognised.

(3) If a man dies and leaves young wives, the sons usually take them over; but, of course, a son must not marry his mother. A son cannot, however, succeed to one of his father’s wives until the elders have performed certain ceremonies. If he cohabits with her before these are carried out he will become makwa.

To remove the curse in this case the ceremonial is as follows: a paternal uncle of the offender collects the elders and provides beer for them; the woman concerned brings a goat. The elders make some of the ngnondu mixture, which is handed to the patient, who pretends to pay it to the elders. The elders then bring a branch of a tree called muuti and tell him to pay it to his uncle. He does so by throwing it at his uncle, saying, “I pay you before the elders.” This looks as if the spirit of the deceased father were offended, and ceremonial payment had to be made to the brother of the deceased, who for the time being represents him.

A piece of wood about fifteen inches long, cut from a mukingezia tree, is then brought. This is first inserted into the vaginal passage of the woman, and the man’s penis is then touched with it twice or thrice. One of the elders afterwards carries the stick away and throws it across a river saying, “I throw this evil away.” In the evening the uncle cohabits with the woman. The makwa is thus believed to be removed, but the man can never have anything to do with that woman again. He can, however, marry another of his father’s wives after the elders have performed the necessary rites.

(4) After the death of a father none of the sons may take honey from the father’s hives until the paternal uncle has first done so. Any who break this law will become makwa. It can, however, be removed by the uncle, who brings a sheep, and he, the elders, and the mother of the patient lead the sheep three times round the patient; at the conclusion of the third turn the sheep is lifted up and its throat is cut, and the blood is allowed to spurt over the patient. The animal’s throat is cut by one of the elders, whose forearm is held by the uncle and the mother. After this ceremony the patient is believed to be cured, and he can take honey. It may be that this was devised to prevent a son rushing off into the woods after his father’s death and annexing any honey he found, irrespective of whether such and such a hive would fall to his share when the elders decided as to the division of the estate.

(5) If a woman loses a young child by death it is necessary for her to have her breasts ceremonially purified by a qualified elder, or it is believed that any future children she may bear will die of makwa.

(6) If a man cohabits with a married woman in the woods while the cattle are out grazing, it brings makwa upon the cattle and they will die. The woman, however, is generally afraid of evil falling on the precious cattle, and confesses. The cattle are then taken out of their kraal, medicine is placed on the ground at the gate, and they are then driven back over the medicine, and this lifts the curse. The woman has also to be ceremonially purified by an elder.

(7) If a woman who has borne children is forced by a man a curse is said to fall on the children and they will die. The evil can, however, be averted if she is purified by an elder; the man has to pay a goat and the expenses of the purification ceremony.

(8) If a hyæna defæcates in a village during the night a makwa falls on the village, and the elders have to kill a goat and purify (tapisha) the village.

(9) Some medicine men have the power to place a makwa upon one of their wives who is a particular favourite. This is done by medicine, but the details are kept secret. If a man seduces the woman in question it is said that death will ensue unless he can by payment induce the medicine man to lift the curse.

(10) If a person goes to his mother’s native village and eats food there, and if by any chance a death has occurred in that village and the funeral ceremonies are not completed, he will be stricken with makwa. Even if a wife goes to pay a visit to her father’s village under the above circumstances the result is the same. This form of makwa can only be removed by a medicine man.

The little known Thaka or Tharaka people in the Tana Valley south-east of Kenia also believe in makwa, and use the same word for it. A few examples have been collected by Mr C. Dundas, and are given below:

(1) If a village is ceremonially unclean for some reason or other, and a man cohabits therein with a person of the opposite sex before it is purified, they are both stricken with makwa.

(2) If a man belonging to a village has been absent on the occasion of a death and at the necessary subsequent purification of the village, he may not enter until a sheep has been killed and the contents smeared on the threshold of his mother’s hut. If this lustration ceremony is omitted he is stricken with makwa.

(3) After the death of the head of a family the sons may take the younger widows to wife, but not until the brother of the deceased has ceremonially cohabited with the principal wife of the deceased. If this rite is not observed before a son marries one of his father’s widows, he will become makwa.

Little is yet known of the procedure which has to be adopted to remove the makwa, but it is said that only medicine men can do so. An elder, seen recently, who was covered with small sores, and some of whose toes had dropped off, was stated to be suffering from makwa, due to infringement of the rule mentioned in example (1) above.

A new road was recently opened in Kikuyu country, and where it crossed the Ruiru River a bridge was built. At one end of the bridge an arch, made of bent sticks, was erected, and on this a small wicker-work arrangement was suspended. Over the bent sticks a strip of the skin of a sheep was entwined. This was called “rigi,” and was a miniature of the wicker door of a hut. The Ruiru River at this place is the boundary between two sections of the country, and the object of the model door was to prevent evil influences, or thahu, entering the neighbouring area by the bridge. The strip of skin was taken from a sheep which had been sacrificed there.

There is a curious belief in Kikuyu with regard to the burning of a hut. If a hut is burned down, the owner must not lodge the goats from that hut in the house of a friend, the idea being that the hut caught fire as the result of some kind of thahu, and that the goats are probably infected with the thahu and may thus bring sickness to other people’s animals. There was, for instance, a case where a hut was destroyed by fire, along with several goats, but the people dare not eat the carcases, although the meat was apparently quite wholesome.

When a burnt hut is rebuilt, a goat is slaughtered to prevent the new hut from being destroyed by fire. The meat of the goat is eaten by the elders, and the skin is given to an elder who has had a hut burnt. But although he may use the skin he must not sell it.

Extinction of Fire in a Hut.—Though not definitely connected with the thahu beliefs, the ill luck which is associated with the extinction of fire in a hut is rather interesting to note.

If a man has several huts it is considered extremely unlucky if the fire goes out in all of them in a single night. He must at once summon the elders, who kill a male sheep and sprinkle some of the stomach contents or tatha on each fireplace. If his nearest neighbours live some little way off, he relights the fire by means of a fire stick, mwaki ku-thegetha, but if they live near by he begs some fire from them. When the sheep is killed they also fry the fat in a cooking pot and sprinkle some of it in the village and pray to Engai (God)—“We give thee fat to drink, and beg thee not to extinguish the fire again.”

When fire goes out in the hut of a medicine man it is not necessary for him to kill a sheep like ordinary people, but he feels the ill luck all the same. He dare not travel next day, and if anyone comes to him for medicine or to be purified, he will not perform the ceremony until a whole day has elapsed.

The elders who were interrogated about this were quite clear that it was God who put out the fire and not the ngoma, or spirits.

Effects of Breaking a Tabu.—A curious case of the results of an infringement of tabu recently came to the notice of an officer in Western Ukamba. He was inspecting the hospital, and found there a Kamba porter stricken with illness; his face was much swollen and covered by a kind of congested rash, and his testicles were also swollen. On inquiry, he stated that his affection came on suddenly after eating some hartebeest meat, and that he belonged to the Aitangwa clan, in which this was a forbidden meat. The officer immediately sought out an intelligent Mu-Kamba, who knew nothing about the incident, and asked about the Aitangwa and their tabu, or makwa, and without hesitation he was told that hartebeest meat was forbidden, and described exactly the symptoms from which the porter was suffering as being the result of breaking the prohibition. It was said that the man would have to sacrifice a goat and go through a purification ceremony to get rid of the affliction. The final result was not heard.

These phenomena are very curious, and psychologists would no doubt attribute them to self-hypnotic suggestion. It must, however, be remembered that a man who breaks the clan tabu is probably, before breaking it, very sceptical as to the evil effects, and, being sceptical, would presumably be proof against the hypnotic auto-suggestion.

(B) PURIFICATION AND BLESSING

Ku-tahikia in Kikuyu.—Reference has been made to purification by the medicine man, which generally concludes the ceremonies connected with the removal of thahu. This ceremony is the same in all cases in which it is considered necessary; it may vary a little according to the practice of a particular medicine man, but that is all.

The writer was recently present at one of these ceremonies, and the procedure was as follows: The medicine man first received a sheep; he then made a small incision between the hoofs of the right foreleg and rubbed a little medicine into the wound. The medicine consisted of a powder made from the mararia bush and mahunyuru, which is the epidermis and hair of a sheep. Probably the idea underlying this was a consecration of the animal for the purpose of the ceremony. The medicine man then brought a number of sprigs of various plants:

Mahoroa,
Murumbai,
Uruti-Emilia?
Mukandu,
Muchatha-Emilia, sp.,
Matei or Mitei,
Ihurura, a creeping, vine-like plant.

He separated these into two bundles, and bound each at the base with the creeper ihurura; they resembled two hand brushes of green leaves.

The mother of the patient or person who was to be purified then fetched about a pint of water from the stream, carrying it in a couple of banana leaves laid over each other. A small depression was scooped in the ground, and the water, still in the banana leaves, was deposited therein. The medicine man and the patient squatted opposite each other. The former then put a variety of powders in the water. These were enumerated as follows:

(1) Powder made from the stomach contents of the tree hyrax.
(2) Ruthuku made from the muhokora root.
(3) Umu, a reddish powder made from the root of a thorny plant.
(4) A powder made from the irura (papyrus) and the mahoroa plant.

He then produced the dried right black forefoot of a sheep, dipped it in the water, stirred up the contents, and placed the wetted foot in the mouth of the patient, who licked it vigorously and then expectorated the liquid on the ground. This was repeated some twenty or thirty times, the medicine man incessantly recounting all kinds of dangers and evils in a chanting voice with a general refrain, “May you be delivered from all these.” He then took one of the bundles of plants and dipped the lower end in the water. The patient licked it and expectorated, as above described, the medicine man chanting the whole time.

The same procedure was adopted with the second bundle of leaves.

The patient then stood up; the medicine man took one of the brushes, dipped it in the water, and sprinkled the patient’s head and wiped the front of his body with the wetted bundle of leaves. The patient now turned round and the back of his body was similarly treated.

The patient then knelt down and washed his face with the water and washed each foot and leg. This done, he wiped his face, feet, and legs, first with one bundle and then with the other. The patient then put his finger into the water and pierced the banana leaf basin, and the water soaked away into the earth. Thereupon the medicine man gathered up the banana leaves and his bundle of leaves and deposited them on the village manure heap, kiaraini.

There was still a final stage of the proceeding, viz., the anointing with white clay, ira. The patient still stood in front of the medicine man, who took from a small gourd some of the white earth, and smeared it down the line of the nose, on the upper lip, under the chin, on the right and left big toe, and on the palms of both hands. A little of the medicines called irura and muhokora were then taken and a little placed in the palm of each hand of the patient, who crossed his hands and, holding them in this position, alternately licked each palm. The medicine man then licked a little of the above medicine, and the ceremony was finished.

The purification ceremony cannot be performed without payment; it is otherwise of no avail.

Ceremonial Blessing by a Medicine Man (Kikuyu).—This is believed to be efficacious, upon certain occasions, against evil and as a purification. The medicine man gives the supplicant a powder made from an aromatic root called muhokora. It is of a greyish brown colour; a little is poured into his hand and he eats it. The medicine man also eats some, with the object, perhaps, of showing the patient that nothing bad has been mixed with it.

The medicine man then takes a long narrow gourd with tiny holes on one side of it and shakes out, as from a pepper castor, a powder made of the roots of the muhokora and mchanja muka plants, and at the same time uttering a prayer. The patient receives the powder on his hands and rubs it on his head and down the middle of his forehead. The medicine man now takes a draught of beer and ceremonially spits a little on to each of his breasts, first, however, spitting a little on the ground as a libation to the ngoma, or ancestral spirits.

The general idea of the purification ceremony is of a dual character; its first object is to cast out the contamination of an evil influence and, this being done, to re-establish normal relations between the worshipper and his deity. It is believed that among African natives the idea of the evil influence is not very concrete, but among other peoples the evil influence assumes the shape of a demon, the nature of which may be identified by a magician and expelled by him by the use of appropriate formulæ. The one is a higher development of the other. In Math. xvii. 14, and Mark ix. 14, for instance, we find the founder of the Christian religion playing the part of the magician and casting out an evil spirit. The only parallel to this class of procedure among the African natives under investigation is the curious Engai possession of the Kamba and the ritual undertaken to cure persons possessed: the odd point about those ceremonies, however, is that although the afflicted person for whom the dances are convened may be cured, others will be seized during the proceedings, the affliction apparently becoming infectious.

Kithangaona cha muchi—The Purification Sacrifice for a Village (Kamba of Kitui).—If sickness becomes prevalent in a village, the headman will consult a medicine man, who may declare that the spirit (imu) of a person who died long ago is bothering the people and needs appeasing, and he will therefore order a fowl to be taken round the village ceremonially and killed. This is supposed to be very efficacious in restoring the good luck of the village, and is done as follows: the village head will walk round outside the village with some ashes in his right hand and a fowl in the left; on reaching a point opposite the gate of the village the fowl will be released and allowed to fly inside. It is then caught again and its throat is cut and the knife is afterwards buried in the cattle kraal. The children of the village eat the fowl. The village head then prays to the deity (Engai) to remove the sickness and keep it from the village, and afterwards prays to the imu, or spirit, of the deceased person who is supposed to have brought the sickness. It is stated that they first pray to Engai because the imu is believed to have gone to Engai.

The aiimu which afflict villages are said to be usually those of deceased medicine men who, when alive, were supposed to communicate with Engai in their dreams. They declare that they have seen someone glowing like a fire, giving such and such a message.

There is another kithangaona cha muchi, which also deals with sickness in a village, but differs from the previous example in which a fowl is used. As with European physicians, the practice of medicine men varies for individual patients.

The magician, having decided that the sickness is due to the imu of a deceased person, will order the women of the village to grind some mawele or wimbi flour and cook it and make porridge.

The porridge is brought to the hut of the afflicted person and some butter is added; the people present dip their wooden spoons in the porridge and each one eats a little and then throws some on to the floor as an offering to the imu; the senior wife of the village head commences and the others follow suit.

The village head then brews some beer, drinks a little, and pours some out to the troublesome imu. Having done this he kills a he-goat, cuts a strip of meat from the breast, cooks it, and deposits it at the door of the hut. It is probably eaten by the village dogs or fowls, but this does not matter.

The people then pray to the spirit and say, “We have given you food, beer, and meat, we beseech you to allow the sick one to recover.”

Kithangaona cha mburi—The Purification Sacrifice of the Goat.—On some occasions the medicine man will advise that the ceremony of kithangaona cha mburi be performed. This is done as follows: The evening before the ceremony, the head of the village puts a stone in the hut fire and leaves it there all night; next morning he calls a small boy and girl, and the former, accompanied by the headman, leads a male goat round the outside of the village, followed by the girl. The goat must be all one colour and not spotted. When the party reaches the gate of the village the headman takes a half gourd of water and places it on the goat’s head between the horns. The red hot stone is brought out from the glowing embers in the hut, dropped into the bowl of water, causing the water to boil and give off steam. A hole is now dug at the door of the hut of the village head, who holds the stone over the hole and prays as follows: “Engai muimu mivo nathika dikoni wao mivo nathika hivia nathika wao pamwe nabia hii,” which, freely translated, means: “Oh God, I do not wish to see the sickness enter my village, so now I bury this stone and bury the sickness with it.” The goat is not killed, but is allowed to go free. This is an unusual proceeding. It is a curious example of a combination of magic and primitive religion.

Kithangaona cha munda—Prayers for Crops (Kitui).—When a villager sees that his crops are suffering from drought, the ravages of insect pests, and so forth, he will go to a river bed and cut the branch of a tree called kindio which grows there. He will then take the egg of a fowl, dig a hole in the ground, among the crops, and place the egg in it, planting the branch of the kindio tree in the hole. He prays to the deity (Engai) beseeching him to make his crops grow like the kindio, a tree which never withers. The egg is said to be used because of its nourishing properties, and it is also believed that no bad influence can penetrate its shell. This is a very pretty example of homœopathic magic.

The Dedication of the Bull—Kithangaona cha nzau—Kitui A-Kamba.—It sometimes happens that when a man consults a magician about a contemplated marriage, or some other matter, the magician informs him that in his village a cow is in calf and that this cow will bear a bull calf which will be of a certain colour, red or black or spotted. He tells the owner that the calf must not be killed or sold in the ordinary way, as it will be the property of the ancestral spirits (nzau ya aiimu), or will be dedicated to them. If, however, it is necessary at any time to kill this beast, some beer must be brewed, and the meat must be divided among the owner’s wives. No portion with a bone in it must be given to a stranger, but all the bones should be collected and buried in the cattle kraal. The meat of the beast must be cooked and offered to the aiimu, and some of the beer poured out to them. The bones of the carcase may be broken, if so desired.

A beast thus dedicated to the aiimu will never die of disease. If, for any special reason, the owner wishes to sell or kill such a bull, a substitute must be found for it, and an important ceremony has to be observed. The original animal and the substitute are tied and thrown on their sides; the two animals are then placed touching each other. Some hair is cut from the forehead, the chest, and the tail of the original beast and placed on the substitute, the animals being then released. The aiimu are addressed, and it is explained to them that owing to pressing reasons the original beast has to be killed or sold, as the case may be, but that a suitable substitute has been provided. Some beer is brewed, and a libation of it is poured out in the hut of the village head.

Old Testament Parallels.—It is considered that the principle of thahu or thabu existed among the Israelites, and the following references to Mosaic law may be reasonably quoted:

Leviticus xix. 8: “Therefore everyone that eateth it shall bear his iniquity because he hath profaned the hallowed thing of the Lord and that soul shall be cut off from among his people.”

This refers to the eating of a sacrifice of peace offerings on the third day; it may be eaten the day of the sacrifice and the following day, but if eaten at all on the third day, inflicts a thabu on the culprit.

Leviticus xix. 22: “And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of his trespass offering ... and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him.”

This can be taken as a case of a man who has committed a crime against tribal law, and takes a ram to the priest or one of the elders of the tribe, who performs the ceremony of tahikia to cleanse him from his sin.

The elaborate ceremonial laid down in Leviticus xiv. dealing with the case of purification from the plague of leprosy might be the procedure adopted by a Kikuyu medicine man to-day: the use of special plants, the sacrifice of a ewe lamb of the first year. The latter is identical with the mwati of Kikuyu practice.

It is laid down in verse 19 that: “The priest shall offer the sin offering and make atonement for him that is to be cleansed.” This certainly looks as if the plague were the result of evil-doing on the part of the patient, and of the nature of a thahu, and is quite in accordance with present-day beliefs in Kikuyu and Ukamba.

The comminatory chapters xxviii. in Deuteronomy are of considerable interest as a parallel to the cases quoted as existing to-day in Africa, e.g., xxviii. 45: “And all these curses shall come upon thee and shall pursue thee and overtake thee till thou be destroyed.”

General Remarks on Thahu and Thabu.—It will be well to review the results of this inquiry. It should be noted that in a number of cases, about one-third of those enumerated, the thahu is brought upon the offender or brought upon a third party, by the intentional act of the offender; in other cases the person, and sometimes the live stock, are the victims of circumstances over which there is no control.

The investigations throw a vivid light upon the complicated nature of the life history of a Mu-Kikuyu or Mu-Kamba, and it is evident that a native of one of these tribes cannot go through life without becoming thahu or thabu some time or other.

Mr C. Dundas, writing on this subject, says with regard to the Kikuyu people: “The fear of thahu is always present, a man may be subject to it without knowing the cause. When anyone goes on a journey he cannot tell whether he may not have contracted thahu in strange houses and villages, and therefore when he returns he will kill a goat for purification before he enters his village. This was done on one occasion by a number of elders who had been on a journey with me, but as they were representatives of the western part of the district, the goat was killed on crossing the Kamiti River, which river they regarded as the boundary of their country.”

Unmarried men and girls are not subject to thahu. On one occasion a woman in hospital was said to be suffering from thahu caused by having touched the genitals of a strange man; the symptoms of thahu were in reality only a bed sore, but a medicine man was called in to cure her. A case, in which a man was sued for a goat for the purification of a woman whom he had raped, and who, in consequence, could not suckle her child until she was purified, was tried before a kiama. The idea seemed to be that the child would become thahu.

The thahu is, however, in nearly all cases removable by the elders and medicine men for payment, and it may therefore be urged that the belief has not much value as a moral restraint. This view cannot, however, be seriously maintained for the following reasons: Take the case of a person who commits an act which he knows will bring thahu; it must be clearly understood that he never questions the validity of the principle; he goes about with the burden of the misdeed on his conscience, and this worries him so much that he gradually gets thin and ill, and puts it down to the thahu. It therefore ends by his confessing to the elders and begging them to free him from the curse. It is in essence nothing more or less than the confession and absolution of the Christian Church. Then again we have to consider the publicity of kraal life, where very little goes on which is not known to the neighbours; polygamy also increases this, a man confides in one wife, she tells another wife and so it goes through the village; if one person commits an act which inflicts thahu on himself or a neighbour, it will gradually leak out by some means or other, and public opinion will insist on measures being taken to remove it. No living person would ever dream of evading the wrath of the ngoma, or ancestral spirits. Occasions may, of course, arise when the commission of a prohibited act may involve a third party, and the person who committed it may preserve silence on the point, but the elders will in most cases be in possession of complete information as to the movements of every person in the neighbourhood, and, moreover, the demeanour of the conscience-stricken culprit will invite suspicion, so in practice it is but rarely that the offender is not detected.

In some of the examples of thahu which are cited above, cases will be noted in which the hut is affected and has to be forthwith demolished if the curse is not removed; this feature appears to be worthy of note, and it may in some measure account for the low type of domestic architecture among these tribes. Obviously there is but little incentive to build large permanent structures if, owing to the incidence of a thahu, the owner may have to demolish them at any moment. The author’s attention was first called to this point by a learned French missionary who has studied the Kikuyu for many years.

It must not be assumed that every native is conversant with all the acts of omission or commission by which thahu or thabu may be incurred and there are doubtless variations in different areas, i.e., the thahu of Western Kenya are not identical in number and character with those of Kyambu district. All the tribesmen, however, know a certain number, and if anything untoward occurs to a man he will consider it advisable to consult an elder; the elder will cross-examine him and ask if he has done so-and-so, or omitted to do certain things. Eventually the applicant will admit having done something which results in a thahu; the way is then clear, and appropriate treatment must be sought in the proper quarter. Ridiculous as most of these taboos appear, they probably have a general value in regulating conduct in communities where legal restraint is in an undeveloped state.

(C) THE DYING CURSE

This is a very interesting belief, which occurs in both Kikuyu and Ukamba. In Kikuyu it is called kirume, and in Ukamba kiume. The belief is also said to be found, under the name of ukuongo, among the Ja-Luo Kavirondo.

It is really a thahu, thabu, or makwa which can be suspended by a dying man over his descendants. The same idea, somewhat inverted, exists among the Swahili, who call it rathi, or the dying blessing. If a man does not receive his father’s blessing, he is believed to go through life attended by much misfortune.

The general idea is that a dying person can put a curse upon property belonging to him, or can lay a curse upon another person, but only upon a person belonging to his own family; thus, for example, the head of a village, when dying, can lay a curse on a certain plot of land owned by him and will that it shall not pass out of the family, and if a descendant sells it, his speedy death is said to follow. A case recently came to the author’s knowledge where an elder was offered a very tempting sum for a particular piece of land, and equivalent land elsewhere, but refused it because the property had come down to him with a kirume on it. This is a very interesting revelation, because when one comes to consider it, in all probability it is the genesis of a last will or testament. Furthermore, it is the rude beginning of our principle of “entail.” It shows, moreover, that these people have almost reached the stage of individual tenure in land, or at any rate, of tenure by the family, the head of the village being the trustee for the family, and it is his duty to see that the gethaka rights are preserved intact. The gethaka is the portion of a ridge owned by a particular family, title being obtained by an ancestor by purchase from the original occupiers, the Dorobo hunting tribes.

If the head of the family feels that he is nearing his end he assembles his sons, and to the eldest he will probably say, “The goats belonging to such a hut shall be yours”; he will then call another son and say, “The goats of such and such a hut shall be yours, and if any of you break these wishes he shall surely die.” He will then mention a certain shamba (cultivated field) and say, “Such and such a shamba, shall not be sold, and if this wish is broken the one who sells it shall die.” This operates as an entail on the property which will be passed on from generation to generation; such is the strength of the belief. Upon inquiry, examples may be found all over the country.

Another case quoted was that of a man who had a ne’er-do-well son who was in the habit of pilfering the neighbouring villages; the custom is for those who have suffered to collect and seize the equivalent of their losses from his father. If this continues, the father, in the end, becomes so annoyed with his son’s misdeeds that he will put a kirume on him when on his death-bed. There is quite a mediaeval flavour about this action.

Sometimes, too, a man, when he is very old, entrusts a son with charge of his live stock, and the son may abuse the trust and let the flocks and herds melt away. Cases have been known where an old patriarch on his death-bed has put a kirume on his son to the effect that he shall neither grow rich nor have wives, but to the end of his life shall be condemned to perpetual poverty.

Again, a daughter may be a trouble to her father; she is, say, married to a husband who has paid the required dowry to her father; she runs away, repeatedly misbehaves herself, and so forth, and the father will then be subject to continual worry, owing to the husband’s demands for the return of the dowry. The father may eventually become so weary of all this worry that he will put a kirume on her and condemn her to perpetual barrenness.

Another case quoted was that of two brothers, one rich and one poor; the poor man may be envious of his brother and hate him in consequence. One day they go to drink beer, and, excited by the liquor, the poorer one brutally attacks his brother and grievously injures him. When the injured man recovers consciousness he will call his brother and say, “You have always been jealous of my wealth, and now I shall probably die from treatment received at your hands, but when I am dead if you attempt to seize any of my property you shall only be able to look at it, for if you touch a single head of stock you will die, and if your son comes to take any of my beasts he will also die.”

If a dying man calls out to a man of his own clan, muhirika, or morika, and makes a request such as, “Give me water,” and the person refuses, the dying man can impose a kirume upon the one who refuses.

A man is, generally speaking, only able to lay a kirume upon a person belonging to his own muhirika, or clan, which really means that a kirume will only affect one with a common blood tie.

There are, however, two exceptions to this:

If a man of one clan marries a woman of another clan (as is the rule) he can, if necessity arises, place a kirume upon the family of his wife if they live in the village of his father-in-law, because they have, as the expression runs, “Eaten of his property,” referring to the live stock he has paid over to his father-in-law for his wife.

The converse can also happen, for if a man has married a woman and has not paid his father-in-law the full amount agreed upon, the father-in-law when he dies can impose a kirume upon his son-in-law, and such kirume may also extend to his daughter, the idea probably being that the daughter has not sufficiently worried her husband to pay the balance due.

The power to impose a kirume is apparently not altogether confined to elders, for it is said that if an incorrigible child is driven away from home, becomes starved and dies in consequence, it can, before it dies, curse its parents and say, “You have treated me like this, and therefore you shall not have any more children.”

It is said that if a person hears that someone of his own clan is threatening to impose a kirume on him, he can take steps to prevent its infliction. The procedure was described as follows: If a person hears that, say, a brother intended to place a kirume on him, he at once takes a male goat or sheep to his village and kills it there; he offers some of the fat, some milk and beer to the dying man, who cannot refuse to forgive the suppliant, and who ceremonially spits into his hands and rubs a little saliva on his forehead, navel, and feet. The threatened person then departs in peace, free from any danger of a kirume from that person. This applies to both guilds.

One curious case of kirume which was described deserves notice. It is probably very rare, but it possibly carries evidence of the ancient origin of the belief and dates back to matriarchal times.

Suppose a dying mwanake, or member of the warrior age, lays a kirume upon his maternal grandfather, what course would he pursue to rid himself of the dangerous infliction? If he was unable to get the one who imposed it to spit on him as above described, he would have to seek a grandson by another daughter, take or send to him a male goat, some beer, the milk of a cow and seed of the various kinds of grain grown in the country, and beg him to come to his village. The grandson would then come accompanied by the elders; he would taste the meat, beer, milk, etc., and ceremonially spit them out on the grandfather, and this would relieve the old man of all danger from the kirume imposed by his other grandson. There is a word kigao, which is intimately connected with kirume, and is often confused with it, but inquiry seems to show that kigao means the neglect of a dying father’s wish with regard to the disposal of property, and the result of kigao, is, therefore, kirume, cause and effect being often very closely allied in the mind of a native.

The fear of kirume seems to be much greater in the section of the tribe circumcised Kikuyu fashion, for a prominent elder of the Masai guild stated that when those circumcised Masai fashion succeed to their father’s property they are invested with the brass bracelet worn by elders on their right wrist, and upon their mother’s death they wear the iron bracelet worn by her. These are called kigao, and once an elder has been invested with them he is quite safe from the effect of any kirume from his parents. The younger sons receive pieces of the ear ornaments, ichui, which are made into finger rings and fulfil the same purposes as the bracelets. This probably accounts for the greater popularity of the Masai guild among the Kikuyu people. At the same time the elder admitted that it would be bad to squander the flocks and herds left by his father, and that if they became depleted he would probably sell a portion of the landed property to make the flocks and herds up to their original strength.

If a man hears that a near relative is very ill he makes a point of going to see him, and takes the precaution of getting him to spit ceremonially on his hand and rub his visitor on the navel.

If a man goes to see his sick father or mother he takes a piece of mutton fat, and the sick parent ceremonially spits on it and the visitor rubs the piece of fat covered with saliva on his navel.

A married woman can impose a kirume, but not on an unmarried woman. The following is an example of a case in which a married woman may invoke this curse:

If a married woman has for a long time been systematically ill-treated by a brutal husband she can, when dying, put a kirume on her father for having forced her to marry such a bad man, and also upon her husband for his brutality.

The kirume is looked upon as the severest form of thahu or nzahu known; in most cases of thahu the subject rarely dies, because it is slow in its action and the patient has an opportunity of making reparation and seeking relief from the prescribed medicine man or elders, but in the case of a kirume the curse is very swift in its action, the patient rapidly sickens, breaks out into ulcers and often dies before he can arrange to take measures to arrest its onslaught; his live stock will also die mysteriously.

It is believed that the effective power of the kirume is derived from the spirit (ngoma) of the deceased person by whom it is imposed, assisted by the ngoma of the ancestors of the family.

It is said that there is no poison without its antidote, and the same applies to the kirume, but the antidote must be applied in good time and the only persons who can effect a cure are certain persons called athuri ya ukuu. The athuri ya ukuu compose a grade of elders above that of athuri ya mburi nne (elders of four goats—referring to the fee they pay for initiation to the grade). They are always old men and rich, and have to pay to their fellow elders of the grade a bullock and a male sheep or goat as initiation fees.

While the athuri ya mburi nne form the ordinary kiama, or council of elders, the athuri ya ukuu constitute a native court of appeal, but they do not admit appeals except in very important cases, when it is within their competence to revise a judgment and, if they consider fit, reduce the amount of compensation. It is also the duty of the athuri ya ukuu to instruct the heir in the customs of the tribe when he succeeds to the property after his father’s death.

The athuri ya ukuu do not treat ordinary cases of thahu but have to be called in for cases of kirume.

The ceremonial connected with the removal of a kirume is as follows; it is called ku-tahikia kirume in Kikuyu, which means “to purify from the kirume.”

The athuri ya ukuu are summoned to the patient’s village, and the day before the ceremony the elders catch a mole-like rodent called huku (Tachyoryctes sp.), put it alive in a cooking pot with some sweet potatoes, and cork up the mouth of the pot. The huku must be caught near the patient’s village. Next morning the athuri ya ukuu arrive with a medicine man belonging to another clan and a male sheep is killed; the elders then take the huku out of the pot and make passes all over the patient’s body with the live animal and now take the huku and samples of various kinds of native food, beads, etc., and proceed to the place where the corpse of the person who imposed the kirume has been buried or thrown out. Another sheep is taken with this party and also a small cooking pot; upon reaching the spot referred to the second sheep is killed and some of its fat is cooked in the pot. They then dig a hole and pour the fat in it, also milk, honey, beer, etc.; they smear the huku with the tatha, or stomach contents of the sheep, and the medicine man ties a tiny piece of meat to the right and left foreleg of the animal with a string made of mugeri (hibiscus) fibre, then fastening it up in a rough net made of the roots of the ruriera plant, and cuts the face off the sacrificial sheep, leaving the eyes intact, and places them all in the hole saying, “Go back to your burrow and take with you the spirit of the person who left this curse.” The hole is then filled in. The medicine man eats the remainder of the meat and afterwards returns to the village and purifies it.

The huku is said to personify the person who imposed the kirume, and the eyes of the sheep are to watch the huku and see that it does not return to the village. The huku is chosen because it lives below ground, and the ngoma of deceased persons are believed to live below ground.

After this ceremony the affected one is believed to recover; some say, however, that it only alleviates the effect of a kirume, but does not remove it completely. The elders stated that this would not affect a kirume placed on a piece of land forbidding its sale, and what may be called the kirume of entail could not be lifted.

The lustration from a kirume by the huku ceremony only applies to the Kikuyu guild.

Altogether this is a very pretty example of what Sir J. G. Frazer terms “homœopathic magic.”

If a young woman has been abused or vilified by the young men (anake) of her particular rika or generation, it is a serious matter for her, but nothing is done about it until the girl is about to be married. The father, however, then takes a ram and makes a feast for the anake of the same rika or circumcision generation as his daughter, and they assemble and ceremonially spit on the girl. She can then be safely married and bear children. In fact, as a precaution, this is generally done even if there is no record of a quarrel between the girl and the young men of her rika. A medicine man is called in, a ewe is slaughtered, and he ceremonially purifies the girl before her marriage.

Ukamba.—As was mentioned before, the doctrine of kirume or the dying curse is found among the Kamba people and is there called kiume.

Elders, atumia, and young married men, anthele, can impose a kiume among the A-Kamba but not among the warrior class, anake.

A man is able to place a kiume upon the people of a village to the effect that they shall not refuse food or good treatment to a particular person, the friend of the dying man; this friend may even belong to another tribe.

A person cannot impose a kiume on anyone outside his immediate family. A married woman can place a kiume on her father’s village if she has reason to do so.