the posts of the houses, and overturning everything under which a wily spirit might be supposed to lurk. The explanation which the people gave to a missionary was that they had entertained and feasted the spirits and provided them with riches, and it was now time for them to take their departure. Had they not seen the dances, and heard the songs, and gorged themselves on the souls of the yams, and appropriated the souls of the money and all the other fine things set out on the platform? What more could the spirits want? So out they must go.356 Among the Hos of Togoland in West Africa the expulsion of evils is performed annually before the people eat the new yams.357 The chiefs meet together and summon the priests and magicians. They tell them that the people are now to eat the new yams and to be merry, therefore they must cleanse the town and remove the evils. For that purpose they take leaves of the adzu and wo trees, together with creepers and ashes. The leaves and creepers they bind fast to a pole of an adzu tree, while they pray that the evil spirits, the witches, and all the ills in the town may pass into the bundle and be bound. Then they make a paste out of the ashes and smear it on the bundle, saying, “We smear it on the face of all the evil ones who are in this bundle, in order that they may not be able to see.” With that they throw the bundle, that is, the pole wrapt in leaves and creepers, on the ground and they all mock at it. Then they prepare a medicine and take the various leaf-wrapt poles, into which they have conjured and bound up all mischief, carry them out of the town, and set them up in the earth on various roads leading into the town. When they have done this, they say that they have banished the evils from the town and shut the door in their face. With the medicine, which the elders have prepared, all men, women, children and chiefs wash their faces. After that everybody goes home to sweep out his house and homestead. The ground in front of the homesteads is also swept, so that the town is thoroughly cleansed. All the stalks of grass and refuse of stock yams that have been swept together they cast out of the town, and they rail at the stock yams. In the course of the night the elders assemble and bind a toad to a young palm-leaf. They say that they will now sweep out the town and end the ceremony. For that purpose they drag the toad through the whole town in the direction of Mount Adaklu. When that has been done, the priests say that they will now remove the sicknesses. In the evening they give public notice that they are about to go on the road, and that therefore no one may light a fire on the hearth or eat food. Next morning the women of the town sweep out their houses and hearths and deposit the sweepings on broken wooden plates. Many wrap themselves in torn mats and tattered clothes; others swathe themselves in grass and creepers. While they do so, they pray, saying, “All ye sicknesses that are in our body and plague us, we are come to-day to throw you out.” When they start to do so, the priest gives orders that everybody is to scream once and at the same time to smite his mouth. In a moment they all scream, smite their mouths, and run as fast as they can in the direction of Mount Adaklu. As they run, they say, “Out to-day! Out to-day! That which kills anybody, out to-day! Ye evil spirits, out to-day! and all that causes our heads to ache, out to-day! Anlo and Adaklu are the places whither all ill shall betake itself!” Now on Mount Adaklu there grows a klo tree, and when the people have come to the tree they throw everything away and return home. On their return they wash themselves with the medicine which is set forth in the streets; then they enter their houses.358
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1
J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The Hague, 1886), pp. 266 sq., 305, 357 sq.; compare id., pp. 141, 340.
2
Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1904), p. 474.
3
J. Pearse, “Customs connected with Death and Burial among the Sihanaka,” The Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine, vol. ii., Reprint of the Second four Numbers (Antananarivo, 1896), pp. 146 sq.
4
Ivan Petroff, Report on the Population, Industries, and Resources of Alaska, p. 158.
5
H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894), p. 322.
6
J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), p. 800.
7
Pausanias, vii. 23. 3.
1
J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The Hague, 1886), pp. 266 sq., 305, 357 sq.; compare id., pp. 141, 340.
2
Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1904), p. 474.
3
J. Pearse, “Customs connected with Death and Burial among the Sihanaka,” The Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine, vol. ii., Reprint of the Second four Numbers (Antananarivo, 1896), pp. 146 sq.
4
Ivan Petroff, Report on the Population, Industries, and Resources of Alaska, p. 158.
5
H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894), p. 322.
6
J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), p. 800.
7
Pausanias, vii. 23. 3.
8
P. J. de Arriaga, Extirpacion de la Idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621), p. 29.
9
This I learned from my friend W. Robertson Smith, who mentioned as his authority David of Antioch, Tazyin, in the story “Orwa.”
10
R. Andree, Ethnographische Parallele und Vergleiche (Stuttgart, 1878), pp. 29 sq.
11
“Lettre du curé de Santiago Tepehuacan à son évêque sur les mœurs et coutumes des Indiens soumis à ses soins,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), Deuxième Série, ii. (1834) p. 182.
12
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), pp. 309 sq.
George Brown, D.D., Melanesians and Polynesian (London, 1910), pp. 413 sq.
<p>357</p>
As to the ceremony of eating the new yams, see Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 58 sqq.
<p>358</p>
J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), pp. 305-307. At Kotedougou a French officer saw a number of disguised men called dou dancing and performing various antics about the houses, under the trees, and in the fields. Hemp and palm leaves were sewn on their garments and they wore caps of hemp surmounted by a crest of red-ochred wood, sometimes by a wooden beak of a bird. He gathered that the ceremony takes place at the beginning of winter, and he thought that the processions “are perhaps intended to drive away the evil spirits at the season of tillage or perhaps also to procure rain.” See Le Capitaine Binger, Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi (Paris, 1892), pp. 378-380.
