le food but must subsist
on milk and beef. Mutton he might not touch, though he could drink
beer after partaking of meat. A sacred herd was kept for the king's
use, and nine cows, neither more nor less, were daily brought to the
royal enclosure to be milked for his majesty. The boy who brought
the cows from the pasture to the royal enclosure must be a member of
a particular clan and under the age of puberty, and was subject to
other restrictions. The milk for the king was drawn into a sacred
pot which neither the milkman nor anybody else might touch. The
king drank the milk, sitting on a sacred stool, three times a day,
and any which was left over must be drunk by the boy who brought the
cows from pasture. Numerous other rules and restrictions are detailed
by Sir J.G. Frazer, and it may be suggested that their object was to
ensure that the life of the domestic animal and with it the life of
the people should be conveyed pure and undefiled to the king through
the milk. The kings of Unyoro had to take their own lives while their
bodily vigour was still unimpaired. When the period for his death
arrived the king asked his wife for a cup of poison and drank it. "The
public announcement of the death was made by the chief milkman. Taking
a pot of the sacred milk in his hands he mounted the house-top and
cried, 'Who will drink the milk?' With these words he dashed the pot
on the roof; it rolled off and falling to the ground was broken in
pieces. That was the signal for war to the death between the princes
who aspired to the throne. They fought till only one was left alive. He
was the king." [220] After completing the above account, of which
only the principal points have been stated, Sir J.G. Frazer remarks:
"The rule which obliged the kings of Unyoro to kill themselves or be
killed before their strength of mind and body began to fail through
disease or age is only a particular example of a custom which appears
to have prevailed widely among barbarous tribes in Africa and to some
extent elsewhere. Apparently this curious practice rests on a belief
that the welfare of the people is sympathetically bound up with the
welfare of their king, and that to suffer him to fall into bodily or
mental decay would be to involve the whole kingdom in ruin." [221]
Other instances connecting the life of the king with the ox or other
domestic animal are given in _Totemism and Exogamy_ and _The Golden
Bough_ [222] Among the Hereros the body of a de