198 NORTH-EAST AFRICA. 



countrymen. The Maliommedans liave been more fortunate, and whole populations 

 have fervently embraced the faith of Islam. 



The bulk of the nation has, however, remained faithful to their nature- worship. 

 Nevertheless the Gallas believe in Wak, Waka, or Wakayo, a supreme god whom 

 they confound with the sky, and pray to for rain during the dry season, and for 

 victory over their enemies. They have also other inferior gods, to judge from 

 their names evidently of foreign origin. Such are Saltan, the spirit of evil; 

 Boventicha, the tutelar genius of the race ; Oglieh, the god of generation, to whom 

 sacrifices are offered at the commencement of the rainy season ; and Atetieh, the 

 goddess of fertility, whose feast is celebrated at harvest time, which falls at the 

 end of the winter. Moreover, they worship all living things and all formidable 

 objects of nature, such as the forests, rivers, woods, mountains, thunder, and the 

 winds ; each family has its protecting tree, often an olive, which is named after 

 the Virgin, St. Michael or some other saint, watered with the blood of sacrificial 

 victims reared on honey and beer. Of animals the serpent, " the father of the 

 world," is the most worshipped, and many a cabin has its domestic snake. The 

 northern Gallas have priests and sorcerers ; these latter, called kalisha, greatly 

 dreaded on account of their incantations, pretend that they can dispose of the 

 future at their will, causing life or death, and conjuring the evil spirit. But still 

 more terrible are the buda, or were- wolves, who transform themselves into wild 

 beasts and cause death by a mere glance. Every person proved to be a " buda " 

 is immediately butchered, and, as in mediaeval Europe, it is the old women who 

 usually fall victims to these popular superstitions. In the case of persons merely 

 " possessed," an incessant drumming and exorcising is kept up, so as to drive out 

 the zar, or evil spirit, and thus effect a cure. Thieves are scented out by the medium 

 of a magician, or héha-shiaï, a high court functionary, who, according to Antinori, 

 aided by the terror his shrewdness inspires, rarely fails to discover the culprit. 



The Ilm-Ormas seldom practise polygamy, having only one wife, too often a mere 

 slave charged with all the domestic duties, but considered unworthy to till the land, 

 water the cattle, or milk the cows. The marriage forms are very numerous, and 

 that of abduction is still honoured amongst certain tribes, the suitor's friends 

 undertaking the seizure. He who manages to seize the young girl and carry her 

 off in spite of her cries, becomes merely by this act her brother and protector ; he 

 brings her to the lover's hut, a cow is quickly killed, and the young girl sprinkled 

 with its blood, which she also drinks. The union is henceforth inviolable, because 

 the Ilm-Ormas, unlike the Somalis, " a nation of traitors and perjurers," never 

 break their pledged word. However this abduction is often a mere pretence, the 

 parents themselves bringing the sacrificial cow to the lover's dwelling. Sometimes 

 it is the young girl who takes- the initiative. She runs away from the paternal 

 mansion bearing in her hand a tuft of fresh grass, with which she crowns the head 

 of her lover ; then kneeling down she strikes the ground to the right and to the left, 

 as if to take possession of her chosen husband's residence. It even happens that 

 the ugly or deformed girls, to whom no young man would be tempted to throw a 

 necklet, the usual form of asking in marriage, are assisted by their parents at night 



