HIS RELATION TO ANIMALS 27 



their well being) directed how carefully those creatures 

 whose shapes they had assumed should be fed while 

 they were alive and how they were to be buried when 

 they were dead." (Frank's Modern Light on 

 Immortality, p. 88.) 



In the Congo, among the Bavili, the Leopard has 

 a Court ; certain other animals holding the same 

 offices, which are called by the same names as persons 

 of the King's Court ; the Mfumu or king calling him- 

 self the Leopard. Among the Yoruba, the only 

 person allowed to call himself the Leopard is the 

 Alafin of Oyo. (For more about the Leopard see 

 Nigerian Studies, At the Back of the Black Mans 

 Mind, and The Folklore of the Fjort. ) 



On the other hand, a grandfather in Abeokuta who 

 loved his grandson's wife told her that after his death 

 he would come back to the world as her son. And a 

 slave in Benin City who was very basely treated by 

 his mistress, whom he hated, threatened to come back 

 to life again as her son as a punishment for her cruelty 

 and, as all the Benin world knows, he fulfilled his 

 threat and is now in that city giving his mother a 

 fearful time of it. He insists on going to market 

 with her, and cries for all he wants until she gives it 

 to him. 



The souls of the dead are thus seen to have 

 departed into stones, trees, and animals, and sterile 

 men and barren women can by prayer obtain life- 

 giving powers from either of these representatives of 

 the three kingdoms. The native thus recognises 

 three sources of life : that which is in the stones, that 



