This paper is based on personal research among the Igbo, and more especially among the Umundri group. It describes the coronation-ceremony of two divine kings who are the spiritual heads of the Umundri. The two divine kings occupy different towns which are in the Awka District, Onitsha Province. This Province is in Southern Nigeria and lies on the left bank of the Niger. Originally there was only Aguku and only one divine king. Dissensions arose and a part of Aguku seceded, to found the town of Oreri with its own divine king.

The direction from which I wish to approach this problem is rather different from that apparently implied by the phrasing of the title. As it stands, it suggests that it is possible for us, knowing what we now know on the subject of African beliefs, to select and reject among them in order to produce a body of practice and ceremony that will be at once Christian and at the same time firmly rooted in African assent. I do not think this is possible. Indeed, I have a feeling that of all missionary activities under present conditions none is more likely than this to be a waste of time. It is true that we do know to-day immeasurably more about African belief than we did even fifteen or twenty years ago, but it is very doubtful indeed if that increased knowledge is being translated into any new sort of relationship with the peoples concerned which would permit us to be allowed by them to undertake activity of this sort. What is our aim? In what ways have we qualified ourselves in African eyes for such intrusion into their intimacies? Is it our desire to arrive at an ecclesia of shared beliefs, involving ourselves and the African? Are we aiming at something in the nature of a community, sharing in varied racial experience and mutually comprehending each other's religious heritage? If not something of this sort, then what is our object?

When the early colonial legislators were first called upon to deal with the problem of witchcraft in Africa, the official view was the sceptical English one, but this had in practice to recognize the native's general and whole-hearted belief in the supernatural element in magical claims. The law therefore summarily dismissed the practitioner's pretentions to occult powers, but at the same time it was forced to take account of the numerous occasions on which magic furnished the powerful motive for some course of action. Certain anomalies therefore occur in the various ordinances, and some curious discrepancies are to be found in the records of cases tried under them.

A six-months' tour in Southern Nigeria has afforded a valuable opportunity for review of certain questions about the chief languages of this part of West Africa and for a re-statement of the problems connected with them. The main questions are:

1. With what success can one dialect be used as a literary medium?

2. Is the new orthography suggested by the Institute suitable for the purposes for which it was designed?

3. Are educated Africans interested in their own language and its development?

4. Can Europeans learn to speak these languages with any degree of accuracy ?

5. What are the present needs, and what lines should future work take?

I can here express on these points only my own views, based on the experience of my tour and my work previous and subsequent to it. The two districts with which this article is mainly concerned are the Efik and Ibo speaking areas in Southern Nigeria.

Der Gottesglaube der Bakwiri ist monotheistisch. Neben Gott stehen noch andere Kräfte, die unabhängig von ihm wirken: Dämonen, Hexen, Kraftmittel, gute und böse, Orakel, während die Ahnengeister eine Art Verbindungsglied zwischen Gott und Menschen darstellen. Mokase, von dem später die Rede ist, und Efas' á mote sind zu den Dämonengeistern zu zählen.

Sous l'impulsion personnelle du Gouverneur Général M. J. Brévié et avec l'aide éclairée de M. l'Inspecteur Général de l'Enseignement Charton, la Fédération Française de l'Ouest-Africain prend résolument une orientation nouvelle qui mérite d'être signalée. Un programme remontant déjà à quelques mois en fixe les grandes lignes, définissant ainsi les trois aspects du problème à résoudre.

‘Au point de vue social et administratif, il s'agit de préparer et de former, par une sélection attentive, les cadres indigènes nécessaires à la vie économique du pays, d'accroître, par une éducation appropriée, la valeur des futurs chefs indigènes et de consolider leur autorité traditionnelle.

‘Au point de vue économique, il s'agit de former des cadres économiques et la main d'œuvre qualifiée, indispensable à la bonne marche de l'économie africaine.

‘Il s'agit enfin par une action sur la masse et une orientation franchement pratique donnée à l'enseignement, de préparer les conditions sociales et psychologiques de la mise en valeur rationnelle du pays par l'indigène lui-même, de créer un enseignement populaire éducatif et pratique, qui dirige dans son cadre traditionnel le progrès de la société indigène.’

The object of this paper is to provide an answer to two questions:

(i) Is the colonial legislation on witchcraft (with special reference to Kenya Colony) satisfactory? and

(ii) If any alteration is desirable, what form should this take, and why?

The Kenya Colony Witchcraft Ordinance No. 23/1925 imposes the penalty of imprisonment for periods up to 10 years for various offences and fines up to 1,000 s. with or without imprisonment (Secs. 2-8). Deportation (Sec.9) can be ordered by a District Commissioner. Under Section 11 the liability to the death penalty where murder has been committed by witchcraft is unimpaired.

As forms of government have been autocratically imposed by us on the Africans, so have our laws. Doubtless much can be said to justify both impositions, but as regards our penal legislation in witchcraft matters it is arguable that it is ethically unsatisfactory, while politically it is demonstrably harmful. Devout modern Christians and agnostic scientists, who rarely see eye to eye, agree in considering the belief in witchcraft a baseless superstition, while anthropologists point out that Africans holding this belief have arrived at a stage common to all primitive races, and that with them, as with others, it is a phase that will pass. All of which seems to me singularly irrelevant, for what we are concerned with is Africa to-day and in the immediate future, and our law, representing the views of the governing race, fails in the dual test of good legislation, that it should be in the interests of and by the consent of the governed. The first is debatable, the second can be emphatically denied.

Làjɔɔ̀k myεεló dìe wóòr mà daánó ònëë̀nö̀(1). Ɛεn dooŋ cΐkó daakonε(2)

The Lajɔɔk dances by night when people sleep. He then informs his

ní: ‘eènòbaa, aan abècíʈó myεεl—daánô’. Dòoŋ daákónε dòoŋ

wife ‘look here, I am going to dance—to dance at man‘. His wife now

kwányó túʈù, dòoŋ ryébó dók túʈù piiny; dòoŋ kwányó tɔ̀bì ɔɔ̀nyɔ̀ ΐ

takes a filter-pot(3), then turns it upside down; then she takes leaven corn, and puts it

àgwaʈa megï, mà gïïn tiío gí tíìc dìe wóòr, gïïn ki cwáàrὲ gïïn aryεlóεló.

in their bowl with which they work at night, she and her husband, these two.

In asking a Kipsigis the question ‘What is a witch?’ there is a difficulty, for firstly, what does the questioner exactly mean by the word ‘witch’? How much does he include under the term ‘witchcraft’? Again, what word is one to use to translate ‘witch’ or ‘witchcraft’? There is a great variety of phenomena which may be included under this term. They are all distinct in the Kipsigis mind and are denoted by different words. There is no word which includes them, all comparable to the English word ‘witchcraft’.