264 
KIKUYU 4 ITHATHI ’ 
invoked on another in order that they may not recoil on to 
his own head. 
The offender who is the subject of the commination dies in 
a few months unless he puts himself right by paying the com- 
pensation demanded of him. My three informants, Kikuyu 
elders, all knew men personally who died after being cursed. 
Mr. Hobley, in his ‘ Akamba and other East African Tribes,’ 
describes a trial by ordeal with a ‘ githathi ’ at which he was 
fortunate enough to be present in person. It is evident there- 
fore that the ‘ githathi ’ was (and probably still is) used by 
the Kikuyu as a means of cursing a tribal defaulter and avail- 
able for use by the latter if he consented to submit his case 
to trial by ordeal. 
In the latter case the accused man at a largely attended 
public ceremony swore on the ‘ githathi ’ by holding up the 
latter by means of two twigs held in his left hand and 
placing another twig on the burnt clay tube which is used as 
a ‘ githathi ’ in South Kikuyuland and swearing his innocence 
thereon. The procedure adopted by him was to discard 
from his right hand a twig at the end of each declaration. Thus 
* If I killed the persons of whose death I am accused ’ (naming 
them), 4 may the “ githathi ” kill me.’ ‘ If I went to Embu to 
buy medicine, may I die, &c.’ 
Purification from contact with the ‘githathi ’ was after- 
wards effected by accused rubbing a little china clay on his 
hands, and also eating a little of the same, those present 
rubbing their feet in the contents of the stomach of a slaughtered 
goat before leaving the place. 
The accused, I am glad to say, did not subsequently die, 
but enlisted as a policeman. 
The Hon. Charles Dundas, in a recent article on the Kikuyu 
in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute , states that 
home-made ‘ ithathi ’ are sometimes used, but are naturally 
not much respected. He mentions a famous ‘ githathi * 
owned by a Kikuyu who inherited it from his father, who 
claimed to have found it in his hand one day when he awoke 
from sleep. It was apparently a piece of petrified wood. 
To-day Kikuyu elders profess to be sceptical as to the power 
of the 4 githathi,’ and state that its possession was utilised 
