The Theory of Witchcraft. 233 



the top of the hut near me. It is my wife. She lies down sleeping, 

 but her leg presents a wound, the wound that had been made in the 

 hyena ! " ' 



From this dramatic story, it must be inferred that in the idea 

 of the Ba-Thonga there is truly an unsheathing of the personality 

 into two when the noi goes to its nightly work. 



A second question arises, which is this : As the baloyi lead a 

 double existence, a day-light one, where they are but men, and a 

 nightly one where they perform their work as witches, are they 

 aware, during the day, of what they have done during the night? 

 In other words, are they conscious of their doings as witches? The 

 question is difficult to answer, as there does not seem to be a clear 

 idea on this point in the native mind. The old, genuine representa- 

 tion is that a noi does not know what he is doing ; he is not even 

 aware that he is a noi as long as he has not been revealed as such by 

 the means which we shall see later on. Therefore he is unconscious. 

 His nightly activity is unknown to him when he has come back to his 

 daily, ordinary life. For instance, my informants assure me that a 

 man might have sent a crocodile to kill another one, during his noi- 

 existence, but he will be the first one to show sympathy I0 the poor 

 wounded, to be grieved for this sad accident. And he will be 

 amazed, when the diviner points to him as having caused the death 

 by his buloyi, of which he was in perfect ignorance. But it seems 

 as if the baloyi which have long practised their horrible tricks are 

 aware and CAen proud of their doings, and therefore more or less 

 ■conscious of their double life. 



But let us hear what are the dreadful acts which they are 

 •committing under their baloyi form. 



2. — The Crimes of the Baloyi. 



(a) The baloyi, first of all, are thieves. This is the least 

 ■criminal aspect of their activity. They steal mostly mealies or the 

 products of the fields. The native doctors have a kind of medicine 

 with which they plaster their mealie cobs in the gardens, and the 

 noi, when he wants to tear them from the stalk, remains prisoner on 

 the spot, unable to draw his hand away from the cob ! But, what 

 is even more curious, 'the baloyi of a country assemble to make up 

 an army and go to fight with the baloyi of another one, in order to 

 deprive them of their mealies and bring them into their own fields. 

 For instance, in 1900, there was a great war between the baloyi of 

 Mpfumu, near Lourengo Marques, and those of the peninsula of 

 Inyack, at the entrance of Delagoa Bay. That year the Kafir beans 

 were plentiful at Mpfumu, and it was explained by the fact that the 

 Mpfumu baloyi had had the victory over their Inyack enemies. They 

 owed their success to the following trick. They gathered any number 

 ■of seeds of a little cucumber called nkakana, and made with them 

 a kind of enormous ladder, which was suspended midway between sky 

 and sea ; over it they crossed the 20 or 30 miles of the bay of Delagoa 



