64 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



were by the ancieut Mexicans offered to the moon. Women have great 

 reverence for the moon, which afi"ects their daily life, and once a month they 

 say the moon is upon them. 



FuMjay Of Sliapc-changiiig. — In one or other fonu the Human Leopard 

 society exists in Liberia, the Gold Coast, and in the French Congo : and it may 

 l>e taken that with slight modification all these customs extend from the 

 CJambia to Calabar. 



A belief in were- wolves and vampues seems to have sti-etched light across 

 Africa. On the Xile, at Senaar in Xubia, wizards can transfoim themselves 

 at night into hyaenas and hippopotami, which roam about seeking to destroy 

 theii" enemies. Human hyaenas, called mai-afils, hold cannibal feasts in the 

 bush, indicating their presence by fearful bowlings, and at daylight assume 

 again their human form. Similaiiy, in Aztec days in Mexico, benighted 

 wayfaiei"S were stricken with awe hy the midnight roar of the transformed 

 human jaguars. 



There was a s imil arity in power and in the ritual of the Mexican 

 priesthood to that of ancient Egypt: and one cannot help remarking the 

 resemblance there is between the West Afiican ritual and that of the ancient 

 Egj'ptians and Aztecs. In Egypt as well as in West Africa " the fundamental 

 idea was," as Pi-ofessor Flinders Petrie has put it, " that the king was the 

 priest of the land, and that all offerings (especially those for the dead) were 

 made by him." In the enti*ance to the Poro there is a resemblance to the oldest 

 form of Egyptian shrine, while the dancing of the Leopai'd men with the ark 

 or shrine reminds one somewhat of the procession of the Egyptian priests with 

 the ai-k of the god. And again, the worship of animals as implied in the 

 shape-changing and the animal societies is hardly totemism, in which is 

 implied a brotherhood between the tiibe and the animal In West Africa, as 

 in Egypt, we find that the venei-ated animals are revered on account of special 

 qualities which the woi-shippere believe ti'ausf erable to themselves. 



By witchcraft a person in West Afiiea may tui-n himself into a leopard, 

 or into an alligator, in order to hiut others in a secret manner. The natives 

 say such persons come by night to the house of another, rub against the door, 

 imitate the voice of some person, pretending to have something to say to the 

 pei-son in the house, but when the person opens the door it is a leopard which 

 kills him. Men have been burnt for doing such things. They tie the hands 

 and feet of such a man together, thrust a stick through them, and, suspending 

 bitn over a fire, bum him to death. 



-The term "Fangay" is used for this and other similar institutions. r)r. 

 Burrows tells me that the members professing tliis power to turn themselve,s 

 into snakes, birds, monkevs, or anv other state of lower life, form themselves 



