It is somewhat assuming to search for reasonable principles in the monstrous superstition of Bantu witchcraft. Can there be a theory in absurdity? However, under every belief of any human group there is a philosophical conception of some kind which explains why that belief has taken such a hold on the minds of the community, and however ridiculous that conception may be, it is the duty of the Ethnologist to try to discover it. That is the only way to understand the mentality of the savage.

Witchcraft is flourishing amongst South African heathendom more brilliantly that anywhere else on earth! In fact, it seems that, not satisfied by the scanty religious ideas that he possesses, the native mind has taken a special pleasure in developing beyond all limits the wonderful fancies of witchcraft. White people have very little idea of the richness of imagination of the natives in that domain. But white people, as a rule, even those acquainted with the native language, do not understand properly what is witchcraft, for the natives. There are two sets of conceptions which we include under that name, which exist also in the mind of the Bantu, but which are entirely separated for them. The other day a cablegram, entitled "Witchery Exposed," which I read in the Transvaal Leader, announced to the world that Bambata was very much deceived by the death of his warriors shot by the Natal Troops, as he thought that, by means of witchcraft, the bullets of the white men would be turned into water. Now, that kind of magical operations which some special men pretend to accomplish is very different from what we generally mean by witchcraft among natives. Those magical operations are called bunganga or bungoma in Thonga; bugoma in Suto, bungone in Zulu, and the kind of prophets, thaumaturgers, divinators, doctors, who perform them, the tinganga or bangoma (sing. mungoma), are held in high esteem. The witchcraft proper, that is, the power of the evil eye, is an entirely different thing. It is called boloyi in Thonga and Suto; the people who perform it are very much dreaded, and looked upon as great sinners. They are called baloyi (Thonga: noi, sing. baloyi, plur. Suto: muloi, sing. baloyi, plur. Zulu: mthakati, sing. abathakati, plur.). Their horrible actions are called: ku loya (Ronga, Suto) or ku lowa (Gwamba) or ukuthakata (Zulu). These two kinds of operations, though both miraculous, are so widely different in the eye of the native, that the one, the power of the divinator, is resorted to in order to check the power of the other, the witch.

I do not intend to speak of ordinary magic to-day; but I should like to sketch the wonderful superstitions of buloyi, with the view of finding out where they come from, and how they are related to the animistic system of the Bantus. My remarks apply more especially to the Thonga tribe, which is one of the strongest of South Africa, extending from Zululand to the Sabi River, and

THE THEORY OF WITCHCRAFT.

Occupying the N.E. corner of the Transvaal and the Delagoa Bay district. I studied it amongst the Ba-Ronga of Lourenço Marques and the Ba-Nkuna of the Selati district. Here I am staying amongst the Pedi-Suto, of the Ba-Kaha clan, and have opportunity of investigating the Suto ideas. My impression is that the South African tribes as a whole do not differ substantially as regards their conception of buloyi.

I.-THE BALOYI.

The baloyi, or people who have this evil eye, are numerous in This power is hereditary, but, strange to say, it is Therefore should each tribe. transmitted by the mother and not by the father.

a polygamist have 3 wives, one of whom is a noi, all the children he will have from that "noi "-wife will be baloyi, and his other children will not be such. That dreadful power is sucked from their The "noi" mother mother's breast when they are still infants, but it must be strengthened by special medicines to be really efficient. chooses one of her sons, to whom she does not dispense these drugs, and he will be free from buloyi. Her aim in doing so is that, should one of her offspring later on be accused of having killed by witchcraft and be called to pass through the ordeal (of which we shall speak hereafter), the immune child will be sent in his place to undergo the trial. The chief will consent to that substitution, as it is well known woman are equally baloyi. But the that all the sons of a "noi" intoxicating medicine of the ordeal will have no effect on the substitute, and therefore the true noi will escape!

form a true

They form a kind of secret Those baloyi know each other. society amongst the tribe, and they assemble-with their spiritual bodies during the night to eat human flesh in the desert. There they hubo," that is, a debating assembly. They discuss what they will do to injure property or destroy life. They fight If one of them is defeated in the discussion (saying, for sometimes. instance, that there should be no mealies this year, a proposal which is not accepted by the others) they condemn him to pay a fine, and the fine will consist in a human body, which he will have to provide, It shows that there after having killed it by witchcraft. It might be that he will choose his own child to bring it to the horrible banquet. are powerful and less powerful baloyi, and they are constantly trying to overcome each other in finding out more efficient charms.

As regards the other members of the tribe who are not witches, or wizards, they are considered by them as stupid beings who do not deserve a better fate than that of being eaten wholesale by the clever baloyi! These men-eaters are the truly intelligent, the superior, the But the others fear them immensely, and when a boy wise ones! wants to marry, the main thing to consider in the choice of his wife is that she does not belong to a family of witches. Therefore the "You are a noi," is the gravest insult which a man can accusation, make to another.

The activity of the baloyi is almost entirely nocturnal. In fact, they possess the faculty of getting out of themselves, during the night; they fly, have large wings, and, after having got out of the hut by the crown of grass which covers its top, or by the closed door, they fly through the air and go to their horrible work. The little flying flames which are seen sometimes in the marshes, the will-o'-the-wisp, are considered as being one of the forms under which they go. *

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Two questions arise here. Does the native mind think that a true unsheathing (dédoublement) of their personality takes place then, or that they get out of the hut themselves, as entire beings, with their ordinary ego"? As far as I could make out, the Suto theory is different from the Thonga view. The Ba-Suto say: The witch is going entire, soul and body. Nothing remains on the mat, when he has departed for his nocturnal ride! He throws charms on the other inhabitants of the hut, and they sleep so heavily that they do not notice anything. The Ba-Thonga speak differently. According to them, the noi is but a part of the personality. When he flies away, his " nthuti," his shadow, remains behind him lying down on the mat. But what is this shadow? If we could make it out, we would learn something worth knowing about native psychological conceptions. It is not truly the body which remains. It appears as such only to the stupid non-initiated. In reality what remains is a wild beast, the one with which the noi has chosen to identify himself. The fact has been disclosed to me by the following striking confession made to me by a very intelligent Nkuna. "Suppose," he said, "my father is a noi and I am not. I want to marry a certain girl because I love her. My father knows that she is a noi because they know each other, and he tells me: 'Don't do that! She is clever; you will repent!' However, I persist in my idea. He urges me to leave that plan, and threatens me with great misfortune. I marry her. One night, my father enters my hut and awakens me. He says to me: 'What did I tell you! Look! Your wife has gone!' I look at her place and find her sleeping calmly. No. Here she is.' 'It is not her! She is away! Take this assegai and stab her.' No, father, I dare not.' 'Do, I say! And he puts the assegai in my hand and makes me violently hurt her leg. A cry, the cry of a wild beast, is heard. And a hyena appears instead of my wife, a hyena which deposits its faeces,' because it is frightened, and which escapes from the hut in howling. My father gives me some powder to swallow and I shall be able to see the baloyi and their ways and habits. He leaves me very much trembling from fear-and goes home. When the sun is going to appear, I hear a noise like that of the wind in the branches, and suddenly something falls down from Amongst Christian natives you will find some who believe that the will-o'the-wisps are the spirits of the deceased which come back on the earth. But I strongly suspect this idea of being of European origin. For the Bantu, the ghosts of their ancestors, which are their gods, appear sometimes, but under the form of snakes, around the graves, near the village in which they lived, and the will-o'-the-wisps are the baloyi.

*

the top of the hut near me. It is my wife. She lies down sleeping, but her leg presents a wound, the wound that had been made in the hyena!"

From this dramatic story, it must be inferred that in the idea of the Ba-Thonga there is truly an unsheathing of the personality into two when the noi goes to its nightly work.

A second question arises, which is this: As the baloyi lead a double existence, a day-light one, where they are but men, and a nightly one where they perform their work as witches, are they aware, during the day, of what they have done during the night? In other words, are they conscious of their doings as witches? The question is difficult to answer, as there does not seem to be a clear idea on this point in the native mind. The old, genuine representation is that a noi does not know what he is doing; he is not even aware that he is a noi as long as he has not been revealed as such by the means which we shall see later on. Therefore he is unconscious. His nightly activity is unknown to him when he has come back to his daily, ordinary life. For instance, my informants assure me that a man might have sent a crocodile to kill another one, during his noiexistence, but he will be the first one to show sympathy to the poor wounded, to be grieved for this sad accident. And he will be amazed, when the diviner points to him as having caused the death by his buloyi, of which he was in perfect ignorance. But it seems as if the baloyi which have long practised their horrible tricks are aware and even proud of their doings, and therefore more or less conscious of their double life.

But let us hear what are the dreadful acts which they are committing under their baloyi form.

2. THE CRIMES OF THE BALOYI.

(a) The baloyi, first of all, are thieves. This is the least criminal aspect of their activity. They steal mostly mealies or the products of the fields. The native doctors have a kind of medicine with which they plaster their mealie cobs in the gardens, and the noi, when he wants to tear them from the stalk, remains prisoner on the spot, unable to draw his hand away from the cob! But, what is even more curious, the baloyi of a country assemble to make up an army and go to fight with the baloyi of another one, in order to deprive them of their mealies and bring them into their own fields. For instance, in 1900, there was a great war between the baloyi of Mpfumu, near Lourenço Marques, and those of the peninsula of Inyack, at the entrance of Delagoa Bay. That year the Kafir beans were plentiful at Mpfumu, and it was explained by the fact that the Mpfumu baloyi had had the victory over their Inyack enemies. They owed their success to the following trick. They gathered any number of seeds of a little cucumber called nkakana, and made with them a kind of enormous ladder, which was suspended midway between sky and sea; over it they crossed the 20 or 30 miles of the bay of Delagoa

and stole all the Kafir beans of Inyack. Should a tempest have uprooted trees and broken branches, people are sure to say: Here the yimpi of baloyi " has passed as a terrific storm during the night. (b) But the great crime of the baloyi is that of killing. They are murderers, and all the more to be feared as they act unconsciously, perhaps, at any rate, without being seen or known. Two motives inspire their crimes-hatred and jealousy. Should one of them have been offended, he is sure to revenge himself by putting to death his enemy. During the night, he escapes from his hut (as we have seen above), he opens his wings and flies directly to the dwelling of the man he hates. But the habitation of that man is well protected. Just as the village is surrounded with a material fence of thorns, leaving only the main entrance and some smaller ones, there is all round it a spiritual fence made up of charms, various medicines, which close the kraal against any invasion of witches. Across the mam entrance even there is a stick daubed with certain magical powders which prevent him from penetrating inside. How must he act, however, to perpetrate his crime? He has first made an agreement with another noi residing in that village, and who has wrought an opening in that spiritual fence, similar to one of the small holes of the material one! He then gets into the kraal, descends through the grass roof into the hut of the enemy sleeping calmly on his mat. Then he proceeds to the bewitching operation. It can be performed in various ways. The main ones are as follows: Either he lies over the man as a vampire and sucks all his blood, or he takes him and goes away with him to the big baloyi gathering, where the victim will be eaten just as a goat when they make a feast: the limbs will be distributed to all the assembly. The one will eat the leg, the other the head. The noi has perhaps a fine to pay to his companions, and he will bring it to them. Whatever may be his way of proceeding, the result will be the same. The poor bewitched man is condemned to die! "O loyiwile," he has been bewitched; "ku sa nthuti ntsena," his shadow only remains. They say also the "nthumbu," the corpse only has been left, his true self has been stolen and eaten. He will get up in the morning, die some days later, but what will die is only his shadow. Himself has been killed during that frightful night. He has been eaten already! Here we find again under an even more mysterious form, the idea of the duality of human personality. How it is possible that a man who has still to live some days or months may be considered as already eaten up entirely, I do not pretend to explain. Such is the native idea, at any rate. A Mosuto tried to overcome the difficulty by saying that what the noi is taking with him to eat is the inside, the bowels; the external frame only remains, and the man will die soon! Most of the natives, when you show them the absurdity of the idea, laugh and that is all.

The noi has still at his disposal at least five means of bewitching called ruma, mitisa, matshelwa, ntchutchu, and mpfulo.

The ruma (to send) consists in sending either a crocodile, or a lion, or more often a snake, to the place where the enemy is going