Religion and Myth: Chapter XIII. Courtesies of Life—Dress

COURTESIES OF LIFE—DRESS

A more savoury subject than public morality is courtesy, which in Africa is all that could be desired. Hospitality hardly knows any bounds, and the chief who receives a stranger as his guest treats him with courtesy and kindness. Many chiefs, on the great caravan routes, are now demoralised quite, and demand blackmail as one enters their territory, a demand sure to be repeated as he leaves. Man in the early days of the world regarded his neighbour as having a claim upon him, and in the age of hunting, food, while it lasted, was practically common property. To this day in times of great scarcity food is hardly ever stored up by families for their own use; they share it with their more needy neighbours. They reason in this way:—The gods are good to men. They give them their food. They watch over the actions of their children, and as the fathers, who are now above, were good and kind to the stranger and the poor, it is their will that their children should obey custom. The whole of the past is wrapped in a halo of glory which myth weaves round it, and each man feels that he falls short of the ideal life if the stranger leaves his house hungry or empty-handed. When the native bards

* I remember once visiting a man of some local standing. He sent me a fowl for my supper, and the councillor who brought it seemed to be ashamed of his commission. Little was said, but I felt the reception I met with did not promise success to my mission. I was mistaken. After the clatter of tongues by the camp fire ceased and all was still, the door of the hut I occupied was cautiously opened, and the councillor who had brought the fowl entered. In a low whisper he said, "Here is meat," at the same time taking a whole sheep's carcase from a young man who accompanied him. I asked what it meant; and the old man's reply I shall never forget, "It is," he said "nothing. You have bought it. Brandy has killed my chief." Here was loyalty; loyalty to a chief whose whole soul was in strong drink, to the neglect of all the functions of royalty. He, as a councillor, could not offer to do what his chief neglected, but his sense of honour, and particularly the honour of his chief and tribe, prompted him to do by stealth what he felt was necessary to uphold ancient tradition, though

Philosophers and traditional theologians never weary of discussing the savage's moral sense and his innate ideas of right and wrong. They find it difficult to agree as to whether conscience is an inherent faculty, uniform in its manifestations among all classes and conditions of men, or an education of the moral sense which is capable of development according to man's stage of progress. I am not a philosopher nor a professed theologian. I am simply an observer of facts as these are met with every day in Savagedom. But as an observer I have often puzzled over the philosopher's right and wrong, and the ideas attached to these terms; over his uniform manifestations, and the theologian's sweeping generalisations regarding all classes and conditions of men. I have wondered whether the philosopher's ideas of right and wrong are based on our Western conceptions—saturated as we have been by centuries of Christian ethics—of a well-ordered state and social system, or whether he would admit the Mosaic code as a correct expression of the innate ideas of right and wrong among the Jews at that time. And if so, whether conscience as such, apart from education, can have anything to say to such questions as arise about a plurality of wives, for example? I

* we are shocked at their immodesty, and cry out that they must be devoid of all sense of morality. This is exactly what a Monbutto mother would say to her daughter, if she appeared arrayed in the ample loin cloth worn by her brother rather than in her own bit of leaf attached lightly to her girdle. These are nature's own children doing nature's own bidding. They are advancing by steps so slow as to be imperceptible, by the same road by which our ancestors travelled thousands of years ago. They are at a stage of development now corresponding to that of the remote ancestors of the Ancient Greeks. To the primitive European, as to the primitive African, a simple code of morals was not only sufficient, it was complete, wise, and good; the will of the gods. Only as he advanced did his moral perceptions grow, and so too will the primitive African's; only let not the European expect too much, or look for permanent good on a large scale from a precocious and abnormal development of an individual here and there. Such individuals may do something within the sphere of their personal influence to raise their fellow countrymen. But only when new conceptions come to permeate the mass of the people, and the new philosophy commends itself as true for all classes, can

* His forge must be placed at a distance from the village dwellings, and no one dare approach at the critical moment when the molten metal begins to flow, except those versed in the mysteries of the art. † The fire used to cook first-fruits must not be kindled by a vulgar brand snatched from the domestic hearth, but must be sacred fire made by the magician in the time-honoured way. ‡ While the crops are growing and before the feast of first-fruits is held, no forest tree may be cut, as that would be to wound the spirit of vegetation, which, to primitive man, would be equivalent to wounding the god.

The sanctity of fire I have touched upon only incidentally, but in connection with it there is an

* Dances before engaging in war are held during moonlight, and must not be neglected on pain of defeat and dire calamity. These and a thousand other minute observances enter into the daily religious life of the African, as they do into that of all primitive peoples. And the curious thing is, not that they resemble customs once common among civilised men, for the human mind in its search for knowledge works by the same methods in all lands, but that so much of what is ancient, dating back far beyond historic time, should survive among the nations of Europe.

A number of the observances referred to have been illustrated by survivals in civilised countries. These could be multiplied almost indefinitely. Even the Pondomise law forbidding the cutting of green wood while the crops are growing, has, or had recently, its corresponding custom in the remote Highlands of Scotland. I recollect hearing a Gaelic rhyme which enumerated the trees which might not be cut after "the opening of the leaf." The mountain ash, if to be used as a talisman, must be cut "while the leaf is in the bud." The willow must

Another custom which survived in Scotland till within the last seventy years, and which was doubtless a survival from very early times, was the Tein egin or forced fire. This was kindled on Mayday, and each villager, all domestic fires having been extinguished the previous evening, received a brand from the sacred pile with which to kindle their domestic hearths. Men who had failed to pay their debts, or had been guilty of notorious acts of meanness were refused the sacred fire, and this was equivalent to expulsion from one's club. It was for the time social ostracism. Nor were our Highlanders ignorant of trial by ordeal. They tied their witches hand and foot, after which they tossed them into a pond. If they floated they were taken out as the oracle proclaimed their innocence, but those of them who sank were allowed to drown. No farther trial was needed, for the ordeal never lied. So, too, the Felata of West Africa ascertains if the king's death was caused by his own wives by giving each member of the harem a dose of poison. These same Felata women, should they see the Juju or great fetish, when carried in procession, had such accidents as occasionally happen to pregnant mothers, and became sterile from that time. A similar fate

Footnotes

205:* J. Sutton, M.S. notes.

209:* Felkin.

210:* Myer, Killimanjaro.

210:† G. M. Theal.

210:‡ J. Sutton, MS. notes.

211:* Waddell.

Religion and Myth: Chapter XIII. Courtesies of Life—Dress

COURTESIES OF LIFE—DRESS

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