On The Gold Coast They Bury Very
Quickly, As They Are Always Telling You, Usually On The Day After
Death,
Rarely later than the third day, even among the natives; and
the spirit, or Srah, of the dead man is
Supposed to hang about his
wives and his house until the ceremony of purification is carried
out. This is done, needless to say, with uproar. The relations of
each wife go to her house with musical instruments - I mean tom-toms
and that sort of thing - and they take a quantity of mint, which
grows wild in this country, with them. This mint they burn, some of
it in the house, the rest they place upon pans of live coals and
carry round the widow as she goes in their midst down to the surf,
her relatives singing aloud to the Srah of the departed husband,
telling him that now he is dead and has done with the lady he must
leave her. This singing serves to warn all the women who are not
relations to get out of the way, which of course they always
carefully do, because if they were to see the widow their own
husbands would die within the year.
When the party has arrived at the shore, they strip every rag off
the widow, and throw it into the surf; and a thoughtful female
relative having brought a suit of dark blue baft with her for the
occasion, the widow is clothed in this and returns home, where a
suitable festival is held, after which she may marry again; but if
she were to marry before this ceremony, the Srah of the husband
would play the mischief with husband number two or three, and so on,
as the case might be.
In the inland Gold Coast districts the widows remain in a state of
mourning for several months, and a selection of them, a quantity of
slaves, and one or two free men are killed to escort the dead man to
Srahmandazi; and as well as these, and in order to provide him with
merchandise to keep up his house and state in the under-world,
quantities of gold dust, rolls of rich velvets, silks, satins, etc.,
are thrown into the grave.
Among the dwellers in Cameroon, when you are across the Bantu
border-line, velvets, etc., are buried with a big man or woman; but
I am told it is only done for the glorification of his living
relatives, so that the world may say, "So and so must be rich, look
what a lot of trade he threw away at that funeral of his wife," or
his father, or his son, as the case may be; but I doubt whether this
is the true explanation. If it is, I should recommend my German
friends, if they wish to intervene, to introduce the income tax into
Cameroon - that would eliminate this custom.
The Tschwis hold that there is a definite earthly existence
belonging to each soul of a human kind. Let us say, for example, a
soul has a thirty years' bodily existence belonging to it. Well,
suppose that soul's body gets killed off at twenty-five, its
remaining five years it has to spend, if it is left alone, in
knocking about its old haunts, homes, and wives. In this state it
is called a Sisa, and is a nuisance. It will cause sickness. It
will throw stones. It will pull off roofs, and it will play the
very mischief with its wives' subsequent husbands, all because, not
having reached its full term of life, it has not learnt its way down
the dark and difficult path to Srahmandazi, the entrance to which is
across the Volta River to the N.E. This knowledge of the path to
Srahmandazi is a thing that grows gradually on a man's immortal soul
(the other three souls are not immortal), and naturally not having
been allowed to complete his life, his knowledge is imperfect. A
man's soul, however, can be taught the way, if necessary, in the
funeral "custom" made by his relatives and the priests; but in a
case of an incompletelifeonearthsoul, as a German would say, when it
does arrive in the land of Insrah (pl.) it is in a weak and feeble
state from the difficulties of its journey, whereas a soul that has
lived out its allotted span of life goes straightway off to
Srahmandazi as soon as its "custom" or "devil" is made and gives its
surviving relatives no further trouble. Still there is great
difference of opinion among all the Tschwis and Ga men I have come
across on this point, and Ellis likewise remarks on this difference
of opinion. Some informants say that a soul that has been sent
hence before its time, although it is exhausted by the hardships it
has suffered on its journey down, yet recovers health in a month or
so; while a soul that has run its allotted span on earth is as
feeble as a new-born babe on arriving in Srahmandazi, and takes
years to pull round. Other informants say they have no knowledge of
these details, and state that all the difference they know of
between the souls of men who have been killed and the men who have
died, is that the former can always come back, and that really the
safest way of disposing of this class of soul is, by suitable spells
and incantations, to get it to enter into the body of a new-born
baby, where it can live out the remainder of its life.
Before closing these observations on Srahmandazi I will give the
best account of that land that I am at present able to. Some day
perhaps I may share the fate of the Oxford Professor in In the Wrong
Paradise and go there myself, but so far my information is second-
hand.
It is like this world. There are towns and villages, rivers,
mountains, bush, plantations, and markets.
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