PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 143 



bottle, wound round with strings of beads." 1 The 

 Museum at Bloemfontein contains a doll of a most 

 elaborate character, made of seeds and beads, and 

 stated to be carried by a childless woman in some 

 tribe unspecified in the Transvaal. The Museum at 

 Pretoria contains wooden figures said to be used by 

 barren Magwamba women, who nurse and play with 

 them as a means of obtaining children. 2 Among the 

 sacred legends of the Batutsi of Ruanda is one which 

 appears to ascribe this practice to the direct institution 

 of the " Creator." In the early days mankind dwelt 

 in the sky with him. There was a married woman 

 who was sterile. So she went with a gift of honey 

 pombe milk butter and skins into the ." Creator's " 

 presence and prayed him for a child. On condition of 

 secrecy he granted her prayer. Taking some clay he 

 moistened it with his saliva, kneaded and fashioned 

 it into a small human figure. Giving it to the woman 

 he directed her to place it in a jar and to fill the jar 

 during nine months night and morning with milk ; 

 when its limbs were developed she might take it out, 

 and it would be her child. She followed the directions 

 implicitly until she heard it crying within the jar, when 

 she took it out and presented it to her husband as her 

 newborn child. The application to the " Creator" 

 was repeated until she had in this way two sons and a 

 daughter. Her sister also was barren and determined 

 to extort the secret from her. Over some pombe she 



1 J. A. I. xvi. 179 ; Tylor, E. Hist. 109. 



2 These dolls are in human form elaborately carved. One re- 

 presents a full-grown man wearing the chaplet only accorded to 

 warriors and distinguished men after attaining a ripe age. Mr. 

 Gottschling, missionary to the Bavenda, who visited the museum 

 with me, suggested that their real use was in the puberty ceremonies. 



