VIIIMANNERS AND CUSTOMS
The Fang is a resourceful man, though he has no genius for mechanical invention. He wrests from nature all that he needs and does not depend upon his neighbour.
He lives in a house of bark or bamboo with a roof of thatch, for which he gathers the materials, and builds it all himself. In his primitive condition his only clothing is bark-cloth which he skillfully hammers out of fibrous bark. With the fibre of the pineapple, he weaves a powder-pouch, or other similar convenience. He makes himself an excellent canoe and is scarcely surpassed as an expert in its management. He is also a fisherman; and he knits his own fish-net. For the latter he now uses imported string; but without the imported string he could use some vegetable fibre. If he wishes to improve his primitive bed of poles he makes a grass mat. An old woman one day taught me the art of mat-making. I sat beside her at the loom, in the street, and worked under her supervision until she declared me quite proficient—so much so, she said with some anxiety, that there was no need of my doing any more. The African’s knowledge, too, however meagre, is as varied as his skill. As he becomes civilized he will specialize. There will be division of labour in the community and mutual dependence upon one another. No doubt he will gain much; but he will also lose something, he will lose in resourcefulness; he will lose something of freedom and the spirit of independence. And unless he gain much in that which ismoral and spiritual, his loss will be a misfortune wholly grievous.
I venture the statement that the African is not lazy—at least notverylazy. He is idle not so much because he hates work, but rather because he is unambitious and the unfortunate victim of a habit of content. He will not work for the sake of working, because, unlike the white man, he can be supremely content in idleness. But offer him something that he really desires or deems worth while and he will work amazingly. There are only one or two things that the African will work for; that is to say there are only one or two things that he wants.
He will work to earn a dowry in order to marry; especially if he has in mind some particular woman as the prospective wife. Month after month he will labour and even for a year or two he will engage in the hardest work. But just as the white master is about to reverse his opinion of the whole black race and proclaim that they are the greatest workers in the world the man completes the amount of the dowry, and immediately he quits. No inducement will tempt him to continue. To offer him double wages would only lower his estimate of your intelligence. He will work for an end that he desires; but the ordinary motives of the white man do not appeal to him at all. He will never work for the mere sake of accumulating wealth.
The men do all the building, and when a new garden is made the men cut down the trees. Their hardest work is incident to war or hunting, but it is occasional, and most of their time is spent in absolute idleness. The regular work is done by the women. It is chiefly that of caring for the gardens (which are sometimes far from the town), carrying home the produce, gathering wood and carrying it from the forest, and cooking the food.They rise at daylight and start for the gardens, leaving the care of the babies to older children or to their husbands. I have seen the husband of six wives taking care of several hungry babies whose mothers have been long in the gardens; and it seemed to me that he, rather than the wives, had the heavier end of the domestic responsibilities.
There is one other instinct besides that of matrimony that will stir the dormant energy of the native, and that is the love of driving a bargain. He is a born trader. But if prices, however high, should become hopelessly fixed, and shrewdness have no advantage, I am not sure that he would care any more for the trade.
Wherever a foreign government has not interfered with African custom the produce of the interior, chiefly rubber and ivory, is carried from the far interior, in brief stages, by successive caravans. The original owners of the ivory start coastward in a company. Beyond a certain limit they cannot go, as the people will not allow them to pass. They must give over the ivory to others who will carry it over the next stage and in turn deliver it to others. There may be five or six stages in the journey to the coast. The first company when they deliver the produce to the next do not return home but remain in the town of the second company until their return, often assuming their marital relations in their absence. The second company does the same in regard to the third, and the others likewise. Since the goods received in payment must come from the coast, no bargain is made until the return journey. The last company carries the ivory to the coast and obtains goods in payment, returning to their town, where the preceding company is waiting. Then follows a great palaver and oceans of oratory. The company in possession seek to keep as large a portion as possible of the goods and to giveas little as possible to the interior people. The palaver at last being settled, this company starts for home and again, after an exciting palaver, divides the goods with the next company, whom they find still waiting for them. This is repeated with each successive stage until at last the original owners, after weeks of waiting, get a small remainder of the goods, or at least a souvenir, for their ivory. The principal satisfaction is perhaps not the actual amount of the goods, but the big palaver, and the driving of a shrewd bargain.
With the establishment of the European government this trade method is sooner or later reversed. The white trader sends native sub-traders into the interior to buy produce as directly as possible from the original owners. This cuts off the people of the intermediate stages from what they regard as their exclusive right of participation as middlemen. The dissatisfaction usually grows until it ends in war. Germany in her various colonies is frequently engaged in this one-sided war; and she wages it ruthlessly.
Meantime the Fang of the lower Gaboon and some other tribes similarly situated have found far better employment. The Fang raise food—cassava and plantains—for the market at Libreville. For there are usually about seventy-five white men in Gaboon, all of whom eat plantains; and there are throngs of natives, servants of the white men, and others employed by the government. Besides, the Mpongwe women, except the Christians, are mostly unwilling to care for gardens and they must buy food for themselves and their families. The Fang therefore can easily sell all the food they can raise. In the morning looking from the mission-house one may see the bay covered with white sails like a flock of sea-gulls—the sails of the Fang canoes bringing food to the market. This is surely the best fortune that can fall to any people in West Africa. While it still gives opportunity for their trade instinct, it turns them to agriculture, the most wholesome of all occupations for such a people. It keeps them at home, provides healthful work, extends opportunity to all and distributes prosperity.
FANG TRADERS WITH IVORY.
FANG TRADERS WITH IVORY.
FANG TRADERS WITH IVORY.
The white man in setting out for Africa divests himself of every superfluous possession and provides only for the bare necessities of life. If he is bound for the interior he must feel that he has consecrated himself to poverty. It is strange, therefore, and surprising to find the natives regarding his meagre stock of goods as fabulous wealth and himself as a sort of multi-millionaire. But it is stranger still that he himself should gradually accept their judgment and regard himself as rich. For the sense of wealth depends upon having more than one’s neighbours; and there is no feeling of privation in not being able to procure those things that nobody else has. The white man’s privations may be many, but they are inevitable; he has all that is procurable in his situation, and far more than those around him. He therefore has a comfortable feeling of wealth, the more pleasant because unexpected.
But this attitude of the natives towards the white man, especially in new tribes, forebodes trouble. There is not much danger of robbery or violence, but there is danger to his moral influence. A kind of communism obtains among them. A man having our “abundance” would divide with the men of his town, all of whom are related to him. If a man hunting in the forest should kill a monkey or a python he will bring it to his town before he cuts it up and it will be divided equally. For this reason it is very hard to buy any game from them; no one person has authority to sell it. Even at the coast and in the old semi-civilized settlements, when a native, after being employed by a white man, returns to his townwith his wages he will be expected to assist everybody in the town who happens to want anything and has not the price—and there are always some of them who want to get married and have not succeeded in raising the dowry. So the wages of a hard year’s work are dissipated in less than a month. It is hard, but it is custom. It cannot be denied that the custom fosters an easy-going content and precludes the unhappiness and cruelty of worldly ambition. But, with ambition, energy also and industry are discouraged and a premium is put upon laziness. The tyranny of custom in Africa and other uncivilized lands is not easy for those to realize who have not witnessed it. It is “the only infallible rule of faith and practice.”
The people of the interior, when the white man first goes among them, invariably expect him to divide his goods with them just as soon as they understand that he professes to be their friend. Such a profession seems hypocrisy while he keeps his goods. They can yield intellectual assent when he reasons that the white man has a right to his own customs; but in the consideration of a particular custom it still remains that theirs is right and his is wrong; and when they actually see the goods, greed masters reason and they are often enraged.
All worldly prosperity in Africa depends upon the possession of proper fetishes. They are therefore quick to conclude that we have very powerful fetishes; and it is inevitable that before long they should conclude that the Bible is the missionary’s fetish. At Efulen, among the Bulu, when we had been there but a short time, a band of men, setting out upon the war-path with their guns upon their shoulders, marched up to our hill and asked if we would give them a Bible to take with them to make their guns shoot straight and procure their success. One day Dr. Good missed a Bible. It had been stolen. He heard nothing of it for a month; after which he was one daywalking through a native village where the people, expecting to go to war next day, were preparing a very powerful fetish or “war-medicine” by boiling together in a pot several of their most reliable fetishes; and in the boiling pot he found his Bible.
Perhaps it is the frequency of war between towns that keeps the people within a town, or in a company, generally at peace among themselves. It is surprising how one can trust workmen or carriers or schoolboys to divide their food without quarrelling. In this respect they far surpass white workmen, or white schoolboys. Where we would expect a quarrel no quarrel occurs.
And then again, just when one has declared that “Africans never quarrel,” a scandalous quarrel breaks out over some infinitesimal matter. Individuals, especially women, often have a reputation for quarrelling. Some towns are notorious. I once visited such a town, where no white man had been before. I found the stormiest people I ever met in the jungles. During the two days that I remained in the town there occurred an almost continuous succession of palavers, each of which seemed to involve the whole population of the town—men, women and children. Long after they went into their houses for the night some of them continued yelling their anger loud enough to be heard by all whom it concerned. The occasion of a general quarrel the day that I arrived was this: A certain man’s hen had laid an egg in another man’s house, and the latter man had kept the egg. The town was rent in twain over the ownership of that egg. Forcible arguments were presented on either side but without avail. Before it was settled something else had happened that required a vigorous exercise of lungs for its adjustment, and the egg palaver was laid on the table. There was not a spare moment in which to resume it before I left, and it may be undecided to thisday. Even while I was preaching, a woman in the congregation, sitting immediately in front of me, continued the palaver, occasionally yelling unladylike remarks to some other woman whom she evidently supposed to be at the end of the universe. In all such quarrels there is much of bluff and bluster, but not so much anger as one might suppose. Such a quarrel, if anything should appeal to their keen sense of the ridiculous during its progress, might break up in a laugh.
When two Fang women engage in a prolonged quarrel—usually sitting immediately within the door of their respective houses and cursing each other in shrill tones, heard all over the town—the people sometimes become impatient and demand that they shall come out into the street and fight. I have witnessed such a fight. They prepare for it by throwing off even the shred of clothing that they wear. They fight more like men than women—if it be true that women usually scratch and pull each other’s hair when they fight. When one of them is repeatedly thrown to the ground she confesses defeat. At least it may be said to their credit that this usually ends the matter; and the next day they may be as friendly as ever.
The marriage relation, of course, dominates all customs and is the foundation of the whole social structure. With the Africans love is not so closely linked with sex as among most modern races. Friendship is deemed nobler than romantic love. This of course is due to the inequality of the sexes; woman is not regarded as fit for companionship with men. A wife is expected to love her own people more than her husband. A man loves his brothers and his friends at least as much as his wife; his children he loves far more, and his mother he loves most of all. Indeed, his love of his mother is the deepest emotion of his heart and his best moral quality. TheAfrican young and old thinks he has fully justified the most violent assault upon another when he says: “He cursed my mother.” Any uncomplimentary reflection more or less serious is a “curse.”
A wife is bought with a price and is part of a man’s wealth. A man’s wealth is always reckoned by the number of his wives. The chief of the town is the man who has the most wives. But most men have only one wife and some have none, because they cannot procure a dowry. The size of the dowry differs in different tribes. Among the Fang it is enormous, considering their very primitive condition. The following dowry was paid by a Fang near the coast: ten goats, five sheep, five guns, twenty trade-boxes (plain wooden chests of imported material), one hundred heads of tobacco, ten hats, ten looking-glasses, five blankets, five pairs of trousers, two dozen plates, fifty dollars’ worth of calico, fifty dollars’ worth of rum, one chair (with one leg missing) and one cat.
In addition to such a dowry a man is required to make frequent presents to his wife’s relations, who may be expected to arrive at any time, and in any number, for an indefinite visit. If he should fail in this they will induce his wife to run away and return to her town, and it will cost him many presents and perhaps a war to get her back again.
A dowry is often kept intact so as to do service repeatedly. A man is fortunate if he have one or several sisters; for with the dowry which he procures for them he will get himself as many wives. Children are frequently betrothed to each other by their parents. A girl thus betrothed is taken to her husband’s town and raised by his mother. Little girls, even infants, are sometimes betrothed to old men. I knew of an instance where a child was betrothed before it was born, the dowry being keptintact so that it could be returned in case the child should not be a girl. The frequent betrothal of little girls is partly due to the fact that less dowry is paid for a child than for “a whole woman,” as the Fang would say.
For those who are not so fortunate as to inherit a dowry or to have a sister the proper thing is to steal a woman from some adjoining town. Most women are glad to be stolen and the affair is often an elopement. This will precipitate a war between the two towns. At least nine out of ten wars among the Fang begin this way. After several or many have been killed the “palaver” is settled by the whole town paying the dowry.
If a man have many wives it is regarded as magnanimous for him to take little notice of infidelity. Seldom, however, does he rise to this level of magnanimity and many wives mean constant palavers. In either case it means boundless immorality.
The aggrieved husband, in a case of adultery, may punish with terrible severity, if he feel so disposed. In some tribes it is punishable with death. In a tribe immediately south of the Fang the injured husband frequently cuts off the ears and even the nose of the guilty woman. In one instance that I knew of, on the Ogowè River, a man cut off his wife’s nose and lips. Among the Fang I have never seen such mutilations, but in the far interior the practice is probably not unknown. A man suspecting his wife of wrong-doing, especially after a prolonged absence from town, may upon the impulse of his own suspicion and without a shred of evidence resort to torture to compel a confession. And this recalls to my mind an occasion upon which I administered physical chastisement. I may say that there were three such occurrences during more than twice so many years, and that in each instance the occasion of my wrath was the outrageous treatment of a woman.
One Sunday morning in a town named Angon Nzok, on a branch of the upper Gaboon, I was about to hold a religious service when I heard, in the other end of the town, a woman crying. For a long time she had been moaning and crying in a low tone which had escaped my attention, though I heard it. But now there followed an outburst of piteous cries. I sprang to my feet and ran quickly in the direction of the cries and to the house from which they seemed to issue, but the door was closed as if no one were within.
At first I thought that I had not rightly located the sound, but I was told that a man and his wife were within the closed house, the man torturing his wife to extort a confession of unfaithfulness, and the name of the partner in the wrong. The closed door was a sign, almost sacred to the Fang, that no man must enter, but I disregarded it. The man had returned from a journey, and without the least evidence had accused the woman and had then resorted to torture to extort a confession.
He bound the woman’s hands together, palm to palm, by means of two bamboo sticks, which passed across the back of the hands, the ends being tightly bound together. Her hands were then raised above her head and kept there by a cord which was attached to the roof. This mode of torture may not seem horrible as one tells it; but it really is exceedingly painful, and if long continued is enough to drive a woman mad. The man at the moment when I entered was probably tightening the cords or making them more secure; wherefore the screams of the poor woman. In the animated exercise which followed the revelation of what was occurring behind that closed door my mind retains a vivid recollection of three prominent and important movements. The first movement was a kick that broke the door in and landed me in the middle of the cabin; the second was another kick that carried theman to the door; the third was another kick that lifted him into the street, where he stood paralyzed with astonishment and rubbing his injuries. It took only a moment to cut the cords and set the woman free. I then went out and found the man, who of course was not much hurt but was greatly humiliated.
“Now,” I said to him, “if you will solemnly promise never to do this again, the palaver will be finished and you and I will be friends.”
After a brief conversation we vowed eternal friendship and he came to the service. But long after the service the woman was still crying with the pain, while other women poured warm water upon her tortured hands, and murmured their sympathy.
It may be supposed that this man would carry out his purpose when I had left the town, and perhaps with increased severity. But this he would not do. The African is peculiarly superstitious in regard to interruptions. And an interruption so extraordinary in the performance of such an act would be regarded by him as a sign that the act would be attended by misfortune to himself, and he would not repeat it. Nevertheless I thought it well to keep myself carefully informed for some time, so that in case he should act in defiance of superstition he might not be disappointed in his expectation of misfortune.
A man may punish his wife for any misdemeanour or neglect of duty; and many of them bear upon their backs ugly scars and wounds inflicted by the sword of an enraged husband. However abused, it is vain for her to appeal to the town; for it is the town of the husband’s family, and she is the stranger. And, besides, the saying among them is that you must never tell a woman that she is right, lest she despise her husband.
A source of injustice, in the case of polygamy, is the influence of the head-wife; for every man who has severalwives recognizes one of them as the favourite, and head over the others. Not that she sits in idleness while the others work; for it is more likely that she is the favourite because she works well and cooks well. But she has every opportunity to tyrannize over the other wives and make their lives a bitter bondage. If they desire anything from the husband there is but little chance of obtaining it unless the head-wife favours the request. In a dispute between two of them the husband’s judgment would depend upon the head-wife. She exercises authority over all his children, even the children of other wives.
Yet, not to leave an exaggerated impression, it must be said that there is much less quarrelling than one would expect between wives of the same husband. The African wife also has far more independence in actual life than their theories allow. She owns the garden, and her husband is dependent upon her for his food. If she runs away she leaves him much the poorer; at least there is always a risk that he will not recover either her or the dowry. And, then, he is mortally afraid of her tongue, her chief resource; and well he may be; for in an outburst of passion it is the tongue of a fiend, and scorches like hell fire. Frequent storms of unrestrained passion give to the face of the woman of middle age a permanent expression of weakness and dissipation. She is the victim of so much oppression and cruel wrong that one would like to depict her as innocent; for it is human nature to attribute virtue to those who suffer. But it most be confessed that the African woman is at least as degraded as the man. He is more cruel; but she is more licentious.
It is exceedingly difficult to learn the attitude of the African woman towards polygamy. Still, I believe it is contrary to her natural instinct. I have known instancesof heathen women cursing Christian husbands because they would not marry other wives, and it happens—though infrequently—that women leave their husbands for this reason. But in all such cases I believe that the woman acts upon the impulse of some lower motive and at the expense of her better self. In civilized lands are there not those who marry for wealth or social position, even without love? In Africa, wealth and social position are represented by a plurality of wives. The wife of a monogamist is a “nobody,” and, besides, has an unusual amount of work to do. But I believe that the majority of women in Africa have in them enough of the true woman to hate polygamy. Their fables and folk-lore are full of this hatred.
Certain phases of polygamy one cannot discuss frankly. Children are not weaned until the age of two or three years. During this period of lactation the husband and wife observe absolute continence in regard to each other. But he has other wives and this continence imposes no restraint upon him. And to the woman it is a source of so much unhappiness and jealousy that she frequently refuses to bear children, and resorts to abortion. This practice of abortion, and its relation to polygamy, is curiously overlooked by those who advocate polygamy for Africa. It is doubtless more common in some tribes than in others.
But while polygamy is obnoxious to the woman’s instinct, it is impressed upon her that the instinct is selfish and ought to be suppressed, and that it is right to be willing to share her husband with other wives. It is just at this point that the teaching of Christianity makes so strong an appeal to the African woman; and her response is whole-hearted. It truly “finds” her. I know women in Gaboon who have suffered inexpressible humiliation and grief when their husbands took otherwives, and who immediately separated from them and lived their remaining years in widowhood.
The Orungu tribe, immediately south of Gaboon, from whom I often obtained workmen, have a peculiarly large body of stories and legends, which form a kind of commentary on all their customs. The following is an example:
Once upon a time there was a very great king, Ra-Nyambia, who had many sons and daughters, and whose servant was Wind. Now, one of this king’s daughters, Ogula, had anngalo. The ngalo is a very powerful fetish. Some favoured persons are born with it. It is never acquired by others. Ogula, when she became a “whole” woman, declared that she was not willing to have a husband who would have other wives, but must have one who would be all her own. She waited a long time, but found no man who was fit to be her husband. Then she consulted her ngalo, who told her what to do. One day shortly after this, when her father’s people were going hunting, she said to them: “Find for me a wild goat, and do not kill it, but bring it to me alive.”
So the hunters brought her a wild goat; and when Ogula saw it she said: “It is well.”
She then requested one of the hunters to kill the wild goat and skin it most carefully. She also requested another hunter to fill her canoe with water. The skin she burned in the fire till all that was left was ashes, and the ashes she carefully wrapped in plantain leaves and put away in a safe place. Then she commanded that the entire body of the wild goat should be placed in the canoe, which was full of water. There she left it for three days. On the third day, standing beside the canoe, she addressed her ngalo and said: “Oh, ngalo mine, turn this goat into a handsome and stylish man.”
Immediately there leaped out of the canoe a very handsome and stylish man.
Then Ogula sent her servants to her father, Ra-Nyambia, and bade them say to him that she had procured a husband and that she was coming to present him to her father. Ra-Nyambia made ready to receive them properly. He called his servant, Wind, and told him to clean up the street; whereupon Wind got busy and swept the street clean. And Ra-Nyambia put on his best ornaments. Soon Ogula appeared with her new husband walking by her side, while all the people followed in astonishment and admiration, saying to one another: “Where did Ogula get this handsome and stylish husband?”
Ra-Nyambia was greatly pleased; and Ogula and her husband returned to her house. But everywhere, through all the towns, there went out a report of Ogula’s handsome and stylish husband.
Now there lived in a town not far away a beautiful woman, named Ogondaga, the daughter of a king; and Ogondaga had no husband. At length Ogondaga said: “I am tired of hearing of Ogula’s handsome and stylish husband. This day I shall go and see him for myself.”
She ordered her father’s servants to take her in a canoe to Ogula’s town, saying also to her father that she would return that same day. This, however, she did not intend to do; for she had determined to win the love of Ogula’s husband. Ogula received Ogondaga very kindly, and when her husband returned from the forest she said to him: “This is my friend Ogondaga.”
In the evening Ogondaga’s servants came and said to her: “It is time to go home.”
But she replied: “You must go without me; for I am going to visit my friend Ogula.”
Then they asked her when they should return for her, and she said: “You need not come for me at all. I shall go home when I please.”
Ogula treated Ogondaga very kindly, and gave her plenty to eat and a good bed. The next day Ogula’s husband said to her: “I love Ogondaga; you must speak to her for me. Will you do so?”
And Ogula, though her heart was sore, said: “I shall speak to her.”
This she did; and her husband went with Ogondaga and neglected her. The next day they had work to do together and she called him; but he was angry. And so it was the next day, and the next.
Now this continued for four days; whereupon Ogula, taking some of the ashes of the goatskin, which she had so carefully kept, came upon her husband while he was washing, and suddenly rubbed the ashes upon his feet. Instantly his feet were changed to hoofs. He stamped upon the ground and cried out: “What is this? What is this?”
His wife replied: “It is nothing at all. Why don’t you go out on the street?”
Then he pleaded with Ogula until she relented and by the power of her ngalo changed his hoofs again into feet. But again he abandoned her.
Then Ogula, taking all the ashes of the goatskin, and watching her opportunity, while he was washing threw the ashes over her husband’s body, saying: “Go back where you came from.”
Immediately her handsome and stylish husband was changed into a wild goat and began leaping around the room. Ogula opened the door, outside of which Ogondaga was sitting, and the goat sprang through the door into the street and scampered off into the forest, while all the people laughed and shouted, saying one to another: “So, Ogula’s handsome and stylish husband was only the wild goat which Ra-Nyambia’s people caught in the forest.”
But Ogula turned to Ogondaga and said: “Do you see your man? Call him to you. He always comes when you call.”
Then Ogula called Ogondaga’s people to her town. She also told her father, Ra-Nyambia, to prepare for a big palaver. So Ra-Nyambia called Wind and told him to sweep the town clean. When Ogondaga’s people came Ogula brought them before Ra-Nyambia, together with all Ra-Nyambia’s own people. Then Ogula told the whole story: How she had got a handsome and stylish husband for herself; how Ogondaga came; how kindly she had received her; how she was even willing that Ogondaga should share her husband’s heart; and how Ogondaga had taken, not a part, but his whole heart.
Finally she said to her visitors: “You may go back now to your town; but Ogondaga is not going with you. She must stay here and be my slave as long as she lives.”
And Ra-Nyambia and all the people said that the judgment was just. So Ogondaga became Ogula’s slave.
And that’s the end of the story.
The African woman is not cynical enough to mean that the difference between a man and a goat is chiefly a matter of the skin. But the wild goat of the story reminds one inevitably of the ancientsatyr, which was half man and half goat; which men also imitated in pagan festivals, covering themselves with goatskins, and singing and dancing. Hence the origin of the wordtragedy, which means agoatsong, and which came to us by way of the Greek drama, which was developed from those early religious festivals.
The Fang have a variety of amusements to which they are devoted. They have many games. A few of these are always associated with gambling. But their chief and constant amusements are music, dancing and story-telling. Of music I have already said enough.
The tom-tom supplies the rhythm for dancing, but the melodies are vocal. The songs are solos with responsive chants sung in chorus. They dance with the whole body, setting in motion the limbs, head, shoulders, thighs and stomach. In many of their dances they simulate love-making or hunting, and the various animals they pursue. Sometimes the movements of the dance are very obscene. Among the women there are professional dancers; and these are nearly always women of low reputation. Men and women sometimes—not often—dance simultaneously, but never in couples, nor is there any physical contact between them. There are solitary dancers, men and women, who dance themselves into a frenzy, leaping into the air or whirling round and round until they fall in a swoon, or a trance, during which, or immediately upon recovering, they name persons who are guilty of witchcraft.
But no person is more popular among the Africans than a good story-teller. There are professional story-tellers whose performances correspond to those of the theatre among civilized people. One of these takes his place in the middle of the street with the whole population of the town sitting on the ground before him.
“Shall we tell a story?” he says.
“A story!” they respond in chorus.
“Then let us away!”
“Away!”
In such a story as that of “Ogula and her Ngalo,” already told in this chapter, the story-teller would occasionally break into song or chanting; whereupon the audience will take up the chant as a refrain and repeat it over and over, until he is ready to proceed with the story.
The African is a born story-teller. And we should expect this from the fact that he is the most sociable manin the world. He cannot easily be killed with work; but isolation will kill him quickly. The old men sit in the palaver-house all their spare time (that is, all the time between naps and meals) entertaining and amazing the younger generation with the narration of their past exploits—how many women have gladly eloped with them, how many others they have captured, how many enemies they have killed in war, and how they have fought wild animals with unheard-of bravery. The conversation is often a lying-match. But they turn out interesting tales.
An old man—a famous hunter in former days, according to his own story—tells at great length of a fierce fight between a leopard and a gorilla which he witnessed; and having at last exhausted his resources of invention, but utterly unwilling that the story should end in an anticlimax, he tells how the gorilla, watching an opportunity, suddenly seized the leopard’s tail and swung him around his head so swiftly that the leopard was hurled into space leaving his tail in the gorilla’s hand. Observing the look of incredulity in the faces of his audience, he gravely adds:
“And this I saw with my own eyes. And when both the leopard and the gorilla had gone I picked up the tail and brought it home to my town, thinking that I would use it to keep the flies off my back. Many people of the town saw this tail; but all those who saw it are dead. For, you see, it was a human leopard (a leopard that was formerly a man) and it haunted the town so long as the tail was there, and inflicted a plague upon the people, so that every one who saw the tail died. And at length, for the sake of the town and the health of the people, I carried the tail to the forest and left it where the leopard would find it.
“And that’s the end of the story.”