These Places Are Only Attended To During The Time
The Spirit Is Awaiting Burial, As They Are Regarded Merely As A
Resting-Place For It While It Is Awaiting This Ceremony.
The body
is not buried near them, I may remark.
In spite, however, of the care that is taken to bury spirits, a
considerable percentage from various causes - poverty of the
relations, the deceased being a stranger in the land, accidental
death in some unknown part of the forest or the surf - remain
unburied, and hang about to the common danger of the village they
may choose to haunt. Many devices are resorted to, to purify the
villages from these spirits. One which was in use in Creek Town,
Calabar, to within a few years ago, and which I am informed is still
customary in some interior villages, was very ingenious, and
believed to work well by those who employed it.
In the houses were set up Nbakim, - large, grotesque images carved of
wood and hung about with cloth strips and gew-gaws. Every November
in Creek Town (I was told by some authorities it was every second
November) there was a sort of festival held. Offerings of food and
spirits were placed before these images; a band of people
accompanied by the rest of the population used to make a thorough
round of the town, up and down each street and round every house,
dancing, singing, screaming and tom-toming, in fact making all the
noise they knew how to - and a Calabar Effik is very gifted in the
power of making noise.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 453 of 705
Words from 125224 to 125488
of 194943
