to pass. He will be killed or wounded. Or, if the noi does not wish to do so much harm, he will only send antelopes to destroy the fields and eat the sweet potatoes. Even in our Christian village, during the days when the "duikers" are plentiful, and become a nuisance owing to the fact that the natives have no more guns, you might hear somebody saying: They are sending us their duikers! Who are they? Mystery! They are the baloyi ! But do not call them by their name!

The mitisa (ku mita, to swallow, ku mitisa, to make somebody swallow) is the only means of bewitching which is used during the day. It consists in giving to a visitor something to eat or to drink in which certain drugs have been introduced. The mealie pap or the beer seem perfectly normal, but owing to the enchantments of buloyi, as soon as you have swallowed them, they are transformed, in your throat, into any kind of harmful beast, which threatens to suffocate you, and gives rise to a disease and perhaps produces death! You will have swallowed in this way a snake, a beetle, of the copris genus, one of those strange dung-eaters, a big fly, or certain kinds of meats of animals. The great effort of the native doctors to whom you will apply for treatment will be to remove these foreign bodies, and when you vomit they will show you with triumph a bit of bone, a tooth, that famous beetle, or other objects which they had previously and cleverly introduced themselves. . . . There is a medicine which natives like to have inoculated into their tongue, and which has the wonderful property of forcing the bewitched food to reveal its true character when you eat it. If you have been treated with it, you will hear the cracking of the elytra of the beetle, and at once be able to spit out of your mouth the death-containing food!

The matshelwa (ku tshela, to throw) are precisely these foreign bodies which the noi introduces into you by the way of giving you poisoned food, but during the night, when he lies down over you and wants to kill you in a slower, more mysterious way than by sucking your blood or stealing your spiritual body!

The ntchutchu (ku tchutcha, to inspire) is another way of getting rid of an enemy. It is a bewitching of the will by which the noi inspires his enemy with the idea of leaving the country. Without motive, the poor bewitched prepares himself to go to Johannesburg or anywhere else. There he will become the prey of other baloyi, who I will kill him. When a boy dies in the mines, as hundreds of them do, his parents think: He has been killed by such and such a disease. But the author of his death is not in Johannesburg, he is here at home; it is the noi who hated him and made him go by "ntchutchu."

The mpfulo is still worse. That word which comes from the verb ku pfula, to open, designates the mysterious power which the baloyi possess to open any kind of things. One of them, a Nkuna, named Nwayekeyeke, had charms to open the kraals of oxen; during the night, he would come into a village holding a tail of hyena daubed over with peculiar medicines, and would throw on all the inhabitants a deep sleep. Then, waving the tail, he would open the kraal and

call the cattle out. Flying with the rapidity of the wind, he would
then be followed by all the herd bewitched by him.
would jump on a tree and rest a while, fearing lest the oxen might
come over him and tread him down, as they were invincibly
When tired he
attracted by the tail. Should people see him on his way, he would
say: Take an ox, I give it to you,
introduced in his own kraal the stolen oxen.
till he reached his village and
There are other kinds of

mpfulo: the power of opening the hut, of putting away the husband sleeping there without waking him, and of committing adultery with his wife. . . . But the great mpfulo consists in opening a man. following story will show how that criminal act is accomplished. Some fifty years ago, a young man called Nkokana, the uncle of my The informant, astonished the whole tribe by his splendid way of dancing like the chameleon. last day of it all the boys had to enter solemnly into the kraal of the The circumcision school was just over, and the chief, the back bent towards the earth, the body daubed with ochre, and in moving slowly legs and arms like the chameleon. mony is well known under the name of tchekatcheka or nenga. of the men of the tribe who was a noi was struck by the perfect This cereperformance of Nkokana, and, filled with jealousy, he resolved to One bewitch him. be at the end of all their trials, they had to cross a thick wood; sudAs the boys were going home that same day, happy to denly a voice was heard calling: Nkokana! The boy said: Yes, I am coming, and he went to the place from where the voice had come. But he found nobody. companions who were waiting for him, he ran all through the bush, as Instead of going back to his possessed by a kind of madness, always following the voice, but with no success. The night elasped. . worn out, a shadow only of himself, and died some days later. He He came back home entirely had been 66 place, it is probable that the noi wants to enslave his victim, and by the witch. When such bewitching takes make him work for him. is living and toiling for his persecutor, ploughing his fields, cutting The shadow only dies, but the true self his wood, and so on.

opened up

Such are the crimes of the baloyi and the seven principal means of bewitching which they possess. They know a number of other tricks. The rich imagination of the natives has full play to invent any number of clever deeds which they attribute to them. have said is enough to illustrate the theory of witchcraft. What we

Let us consider briefly how the common people try to protect themselves against such a terrible danger which threatens them all.

3. THE PROTECTION AGAINST BALOYI, AND THE WAY IN WHICH THEY ARE PUNISHED.

As we saw, every village is surrounded by a fence made up of charms, which competent doctors put all round to prevent the baloyi from entering. A great magician of the Nkuna tribe, Mankhelu, son of the chief Shiluvane, gave me the receipt of the medicine which he

employs for the purpose. It is a kind of ointment in which are contained different powders made up of various sea-animals; the jellyfish (which the natives believe to be the result of the spitting of the whale!), the sea-urchin, the sponge, and others. To these seaanimals are added some roots which have been exposed to the light by the rain which has washed out the soil in the kloof. All these drugs which are also employed to obtain rain are mixed with fat and burnt on charcoal, at dawn, on the road to the village to protect the main entrance. Stones are daubed with it and put in all directions to close other openings. Then a second fire is made before the threshhold of the hut, and the smoke which comes out from the magical fat will keep the baloyi away. "These medicines act wonderfully, says Mankhelu. Should a noi succeed in entering the hut, the power of that smoke will be such that he will at once be revealed. Without any clothing, the noi will suddenly be seen there as if dreaming, seeing nothing, knowing nothing. If it is a woman, I will call her husband and show him his wife. . 'What are you doing here?' he will say to her. She will not utter a word. Then I will tell him 'Look here, my friend. . . . I might be hard on you. But I have pity. Do not allow your wife to do anything of the kind again. Pay me one or two oxen, and I will keep silent.' He will consent. Then I beat the woman with my stick. She awakes, and, quite ashamed of being in another hut without any clothing, she will fly away home!" Such is the testimony of Mankhelu, and he is sure of having succeeded more than once ! !

But should all the protective medicines which surround the village, which have been swallowed by the inhabitants or by which they have been inoculated, remain without effect, should a serious disease occur, one of those evils which are generally attributed to the baloyi, the first thing to do is to go to the divinator, who will cast the bones and make out if the disease is due to witchcraft or not. This consultation is secret, and only preliminary. There are in the sets of bones employed in the bantu divination, some which represent the baloyi, especially the astragalus of the " duiker," that small antelope which rambles about during the night, just at the time when the witches operate. Should that bone fall in a certain way near the bone representing the patient, it shows that his disease is the outcome of bulovi. The name of the noi will be searched for and perhaps ascertained that first day, but the parents of his victim will never dare to accuse him only on the testimony of the bones. * The next step will be to go to the mungoma, the magician who "smells out" the baloyi. A wonderful personage he is! Amongst the Nkuna the great magician is Nwashihandjime, a splendid man, tall, clever, his eyes beaming with a kind of supernatural light, holding an enormous tail of a horse fixed on a handle richly decorated

*The Ba-Suto of the country generally were convinced by the mere consultation of the bones. They learned of the Thonga to go to the mongoma, and they choose a thonga mongoma to help them. However, they used also the mondjo ordeal and were going to Palabora to make it.

with beads and copper wire. He has a very great influence, and the man on whom the tail falls is a lost man! Should there be no white rulers in the country he would be hanged. How is the mungoma disclosing the baloyi? The father of the bewitched, his parents, come to him, pay him 1, and ask him to find out the murderer of his son. He makes them sit down in a half-circle, and, facing them, begins to put to them some questions. They answer always by the word mamoo, which means yes, in the language of bungoma. But their mamoo is cool or warm, doubtful or convinced, and the clever diviner perceives easily every shade of meaning in that perpetual mamoo. . . . He is well aware of all the disputes and hatred between the people and, in his investigation, he draws nearer and nearer to the man of whom the parents are thinking. Their mamoo becomes bolder. . . The questions are more precise. . . At last, when he feels himself agreeing with the consultant, the mungoma pronounces the name and lets fall his tail. He is bathed in perspiration after the great strain, and he remains silent, as if he were invulnerable; he has triumphantly "smelt out" the culprit. . .

The

Next day, relatives of the patient go to the kraal of the noi, waving branches, dance before him, and say: Thus you are killing us ! The accused one keeps silent. Then he says: All right. We shall come to-morrow and consult also our mungoma. Both parties then go to another divinator. The scene of "smelling out" is again gone through, and very likely the verdict of the second mungoma will confirm that of the first one. . . The augurs know that they must not contradict each other if they want to maintain their authority. As soon as the proof and counterproof have been obtained, the case becomes a judicial one. The plaintiff puts the matter before the chief, who will not condemn before the guilt of the pretended noi is confirmed by the ordeal, the trial by the famous philter called mondjo. The mondjo is a plant of the Solaneae family which possesses intoxicating properties. It is administered both to the plaintiff and to the accused by another doctor who knows how to prepare it. noi who has drank from it is exposed to the sun, and after a little time shows symptoms of drunkenness. The whole scene is very characteristic. The explanation given to me by an old native is this. In the mondjo there is a little bit of human flesh reduced to powder, or a bit of bone taken from a leper. The noi who eats it in drinking the philter happens to do during the day what he is accustomed to do only at night; hence his loss of sense! He has been revealed as noi. In fact, the man who administers the philter is clever enough to give a large dose to the accused and a small one to the plaintiff ! The first one, being already under the effect of a strong suggestion, is more apt to feel the stupifying effect of the drug, and his drunkenness is easily explained in this natural way. In former times there was but one punishment for baloyi. They were hanged at once. The last one who was killed in that way amongst the Nkuna is Mudebana, hanged in 1892 or 1893 in Thabina by order of Mankhelu,

*

* See for more details on the ordeal my book: "Les Ba-Ronga," pp. 431-439.

the regent of the young chief Mohlaba. The Boers having heard about it condemned Mankhelu to death. The whole tribe was terribly excited. The sentence was commuted into an imprisonment of one year, and since then the native tribunal does not dare to condemn anybody for the crime of buloyi, although they remain convinced as much as ever of the reality of those crimes.

4.--THE EXPLANATION OF THE ORIGIN OF BULOVI, AND THE MEANS OF FIGHTING AGAINST IT.

It may seem inexplicable that millions of human beings who possess a fair amount of reason and of commonsense, entire tribes which are not among the least gifted in mankind can entertain such absurd, dreadful ideas, as those on which rest the bantu buloyi. But let us remember that three centuries ago European tribunals were condemning wholesale hundreds of poor people accused of witchcraft. There, however, was a capital difference. The white witches, our ancestors, who were burnt by thousands all over Europe, were supposed to have made a pact with Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness. That sin was considered as essentially diabolical in its origin. The Bantu have no idea of Satan, and that aspect of witchcraft is entirely absent from their mind.

Let us consider the various elements of the baloyi theory and seek an explanation for them. Bantu witchcraft is a direct outcome of the dogmatics of the savages, of that conception of the world which is at the basis of all their superstitions and beliefs. Animism is the name of that dim, confused philosophy, and it consists in projecting into nature the state of things which we find in ourselves. Just as every act performed by man is the result of a determination of his will, so everything happening in the world is the result of an intelligent agent. There is very little or no notion of natural laws in the Bantu. For him a spiritual cause alone can explain the facts, especially those which hurt him and destroy his happiness in life. Apply these principles to this great source of sorrow and disappointment, death, and you will hear him say: Death is only natural when caused by old age. But when a man in his prime, or a lad, a baby, a person still useful dies, he or she must have been killed by a special agent. There are but two explanations of the fact: Either he has injured one of his departed ancestors, one of the gods, and is punished for that offence, or he is the victim of a living man who hates him and bewitched him. That is why a chief of great fame in the Nkuna tribe, Shiluvane, had issued this decree: "I do not allow of anybody dying in my country except on account of old age. Let the baloyi at once cease their enchantments or I will kill them all." The philosophical reason of buloyi is then obvious, and that accounts for the fact that it is so widely spread and so deeply rooted amongst the Bantu. But the psychological conception of the native fosters also the belief in buloyi. We have seen in two instances that the buloyi supposes an unsheathing of the human personality. That idea