456
Heinrich Aufenanger
Anthropos 61. 1966
is heard in the house at night, people will ask the person who destroyed the
leptile to leave their house and sleep somewhere else. They are afraid the
snake might kill them all if he stayed with them. — When a man has killed a
marsupial, not in the bush but in the open, where houses are built, the old men
will say: The children of the fellow who killed the marsupial, will die. The
marsupial’s mother will hit them.” (Reported by En.)
komkane
My mother told me the following little story: A woman was washing
her sweet potatoes in a little creek, when she heard the squealing of a pig a
little further up the creek. She went to see what was going on and saw a black
stone moving along and squealing like a pig. She took the stone to her house
and laid it into the pigsty. Her pigs slept and ate on it, thrived well and p r0 '
duced plenty of piglets. One of the woman’s pigs which had been slaughtered
and eaten before, had been transformed into this stone and was having this
good effect on all the other pigs. (Reported by Goglau.)
KULXKANE
Our people say that when a man’s wife has died and a pig has been
slaughtered and eaten, he will go and look for another wife. He will follow the
Tendigl ndawai road to the Kuno area. There he will find a huge rock. If k e
hits it with a stick, it will open by itself and a pig will appear. It will come neai
him and lick his legs, showing him its joy. If he calls the name of the pig th a ^
he killed on the day of his wife’s funeral, the pig will become even more friendly-
Then he will put the dead pig’s soul back into the cave. He believes that it
is reared by his dead father and mother.
The Kulxkane tell the following story; Two boys had killed a little snake
or a lizard of the emhrame kind. They cut off its tail and left the dead reptd e
and its tail in the bush. After that they went home and slept in their house-
Next morning they saw the snake’s or lizard’s soul alive, lying near the entrance
to their house. They recognized it because it had no tail. The boys’ relative-
therefore slaughtered, cooked and ate a pig. Then they took the reptile and
the pig’s jawbone to the place where the boys had killed the animal. The>
threw the snake or lizard into the bush and ate the meat that was round fk e
jawbone. They were convinced that the reptile was the pig of the Dove spu'd -
(Reported by Wave.)
1 he souls of dead pigs are believed to follow the Thimbu River towards
the south. (Reported by Mende.)
VAUGLA
W hen a pig gets up in the middle of the night to eat sweet potatoes, f^ e
woman (who is in charge of the pigs) will give her husband the following exp^ 1
nation. Your deceased father and mother came at midnight and fed the pG'
They took its soul with them. I think we’d better slaughter this pig if eith cI
of us falls ill.” (Reported by Yomba.)