Western Africa; Its Condition, and Christianity, the Means of Its Recovery (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTEB VI. CHABM8?OF WHAT THEY CONSIST?FETISH CEREMONIES?VIRTUES ASCRIBED TO CHARMS CONFIDENCE REPOSED IN THEM?DEEPLY ROOTED CHARACTER OF THIS SUPERSTITION?MANNER IN WHICH CHARMS ARE SUPPOSED TO OPERATE. To most of the subordinate deities of Africa, the natives, as we have seen, attribute evil rather than good. This has originated another class of superstitions, in order to secure protection from their influence; and this appears to have suggested the adoption of similar means to avert any calamity, real or imaginary, which may be apprehended. Hence the grigris, or charms, in the efficacy of which the negro is universally found, in almost every article of life, to repose such implicit confidence. These have received divers names from different writers. They have been called grigri, saphies, quees, and fetishes?each designation having reference to the same class of objects. 1. The articles of which African charms consist are Some travellers have confounded these charms with the gods of the negro. Thus Golberry, speaking of the pagan Yolof, says, " A tree, a serpent, a ram's horn, a stone, scraps of paper covered with Arabic characters,?are deities with them. It is certain, however, that the charms and subordinate deities of Africa are distinct from each other. exceedingly numerous. A stick, a stone, a piece of string, and numerous other trifles, equally insignificant, often make a grigri. But in those countries where mohammedanism has been introduced, charms are mostly select sentences from the Koran. These are worn and venerated alike by moslem and pagan. The superstition of the negro, however, appears to be such as to attribute the virtue of a charm to almost any object on which his fancy may fix. Mungo Park states, that on his departure from one of the ...