262 Annals of the Transvaal Museum 
NOTE ON A RELIC OF THE PHALLUS CULT 
AMONG THE M’KAHTLA 
By Percy A. Wagner. 
With 1 plate. 
Scattered over the Elands River ward of the Pretoria district of the Trans- 
vaal are isolated communities of a native tribe known as the M’Kahtla or 
Vaal Kafirs. These on investigation prove to be Baralong, who at some date 
not definitely fixed migrated from the western Transvaal to their present 
habitat. In the well-known M’Kahtla village on the farm Rooifontein, No. 
378, the writer recently came across an interesting relic of phallicism which 
it is the object of the present note to describe. 
Travelling through the village the eye is at once arrested by two groups of 
tall poles, the one standing isolated from the huts and kraals in a field near the 
centre of the village, the other in an enclosure within a palisade. 
The poles of the first group have evidently been standing for some con- 
siderable time as the wood of which they are composed is in an advanced 
state of decay. Of those within the palisade three look rather ancient. The 
fourth, shown in the accompanying photograph (Plate VI), which is covered 
with a decorative pattern in black, has evidently been erected quite recently. 
Enquiries elicited the fact that the erection of the poles forms part of the 
circumcision rites of the tribe, the actual circumstances being as follows : 
The so-called circumcision chief and the adult natives and initiated youths, 
who have attended the ceremony, on the night of their return from the circum- 
cision lodge, slaughter a cow and, having eaten it, proceed to plant in the 
ground a previously cut pole, which they decorate in the manner shown with 
a black pigment prepared from powdered charcoal and the fat of the cow. 
The next morning, immediately after sunrise, the whole of the adult male 
populace assemble and dance round the pole shouting, “O women come and 
see what the cow has brought forth in the night.” This is a signal for the 
women and children to join in the ceremony, the men continuing to sing and 
chant songs — for the most part highly obscene — peculiar to the occasion. 
All the boys who are circumcised at the time are said to belong to the same 
regiment, and each regiment has as its emblem its own pole, which is held in 
great veneration. In this respect the poles play much the same part in the 
initiation ceremony as the small conical stone erections or Phiri, which are 
put up alongside the circumcision lodges of the Bapedi of Sekukuniland 1 . 
According to the testimony of educated natives the poles, which are called 
Ramoleele (literally “longer than anything else”), represent the male organ, 
and there can be no question, therefore, that we have to do with a survival of 
the Phallus cult; the whole ceremony being of the nature of what has been 
termed sympathetic magic. It is probably in some obscure pagan observance 
of this nature that the Maypole dance, which until a comparatively recent 
date figured so prominently in the May Day festivals of European peasants, 
had its origin. 
1 Cf. Roberts, N. and Winter, C. A. T., S. A. Journ. Set. 1915, pp. 574-575- 
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. B. PEACE, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
