22 NOTES ON WEST AFRICAN CATEGORIES 



primitive man whose want of twentieth century 

 vocabulary has not permitted him (primitive man) to 

 express a truth in twentieth century language. 



The Bini woman desirous to become a mother goes 

 to a sacred stone and invokes it accordingly. " Call 

 me not 'stone,' " answers the stone, " I am a being : " 

 and he grants her prayer. 



The Oni of Ife asserts that when the Creator had 

 finished making the world He turned to stone again. 



Herbert Spencer quoting Piedrahita (Sociology i-i 

 page 1 80) says "the Laches worshipped every stone 

 as a god, as they said they had all been men, and that 

 all men were converted into stones after death, and 

 that a day was coming when all stones would be 

 raised as men." 



A Chukchi female Shaman showed a recent scientific 

 traveller a stone of peculiar shape which she called 

 her husband. {Primitive Paternity, page 119, 

 Hartland.) 



An egg-shaped pebble of quartz two inches long by 

 an inch and a half in greatest diameter was formerly 

 used in the western division of Sandsting parish as a 

 cure for sterility. (Ibid, page 79.) 



Beneath a chair (which is of stone and much worn) 

 in Finchale Priory Church in the county of Durham 

 is shown a seat, said to have the virtue of removing 

 sterility and procuring issue for any woman who, 

 having performed certain ceremonies, sat down therein 

 and devoutly wished for a child. (Ibid, page 129.) 



The truth buried in all this is that stones were and 

 still are believed to have a living principle in them. 



