SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 115 



Fetish is a code of offerings calculated to propitiate the different 

 evil spirits. Some of the spirits are not evil, but they have to be pro- 

 pitiated, and, as I have been able to ascertain, they are the spirits of 

 ancestors, and for the most part offerings of meat, <'.//> fowls, sheep, 

 eggs and plantain, propitiate them and assure their services against 

 evil spirits. Evil spirits are also in request to do harm to an enemy 

 or to find out a thief or to punish a thief. Fetish, to put it simply, is 

 votive offerings to good or bad spirits as the case may require. There 

 is no such thing as worship of fetish as is frequently said. It would 

 take up too much space in a short paper like this to go into the whole 

 code of fetish or even part of it. As an example of fetish for sick- 

 ness, I remember on going through Jansu, a town 130 miles north of 

 Kuniasi, I saw on the path a weaver-bird's nest. I took it up to have 

 a look at it and found a round flattish stone inside. I asked my boy 

 what it meant, and after some trouble he admitted it was "medicini," 

 i.e., Ju Ju. I asked what for. He replied, " Man live. Water he had." 

 Upon reaching Jansu I made the boy find the man who was sick. He 

 did so, and I found that the man was suffering from stone in the 

 bladder. Later on, when I made another visit to Jansu, I heard that 

 this man's daughter by number four wife had disappeared. He was 

 the chiefs brother, and she was sacrificed at a big Ju Ju palaver. 

 Ekcheva was her name, and she would have been about fourteen 

 years old. I knew her because I bought a native doll from her on a 

 former occasion. 



Tomtoms or native drums are Ju Ju, and at night, moonlight 

 nights by preference, there are regular religious dances and chanting, 

 to the accompaniment of the tomtoms. In many villages the people 

 get worked up into a state almost approaching mania. 



To become a Ju Ju man an apprenticeship has to be served 

 lasting from seven to eight years. No special vocation is necessary, 

 such as celibacy or the giving up of ordinary daily life, but certain 

 ordeals have to be gone through of which I never have been able to 

 discover anything. In a nutshell the religion of the Ashantis (and I 

 believe of many of the African races) is this : God and man, with evil 



