of
taro in his hand and pray, "O Mrs. Zewanong, may my taro leaves unfold
till they are as broad as the petticoat which covers thy loins!" When
they are planting yams, they pray to two women named Tendung and Molewa
that they would cause the yams to put forth as long suckers as the
strings which the women twist to make into carrying-nets. Before they
dig up the yams, they take a branch and drive with it the evil spirits
or ghosts from the house in which the yams are to be stored. Having
effected this clearance they stick the branch in the roof of the house
and appoint a certain ghostly man named Ehang to act as warden. Again,
fowlers invoke a married pair of ghosts called Manze and Tamingoka to
frighten the birds from the trees and drive them on the limed twigs. Or
they pray to a ghostly woman named Lane, saying, "In all places of the
neighbourhood shake the betel-nuts from the palms, that they may fall
down to me on this fruit-tree and knock the berries from the boughs!"
But by the betel-nuts the fowler in veiled language means the birds,
which are to come in flocks to the fruit-tree and be caught fast by the
lime on the branches. Again, when a fisherman wishes to catch eels, he
prays to two ghosts called Yambi and Ngigwali, saying: "Come, ye two
men, and go down into the holes of the pool; smite the eels in them, and
draw them out on the bank, that I may kill them!" Once more, when a
child suffers from enlarged spleen, which shews as a swelling on its
body, the parent will pray to a ghost named Aidolo for help in these
words: "Come and help this child! It is big with a ball of sickness. Cut
it up and squeeze and squash it, that the blood and pus may drain away
and my child may be made whole!" To give point to the prayer the
petitioner simultaneously pretends to cut a cross on the swelling with a
knife.[466]

[Sidenote: Possible development of departmental gods out of ghosts.]

From this it appears that men and women who impressed their
contemporaries by their talents, their virtues, or their vices in their
lifetime, are sometimes remembered long after their death and continue
to be invoked by their descendants for help in the particular department
in which they had formerly rendered themselves eminent either for good
or for evil. Such powerful and admired or dreaded ghosts might easily
grow in time into gods and goddesses, who are worshipped as presiding
over the various departments of nature and of human life. There