Perhaps the central part of Degama District may be looked upon as that where the worship of Ale holds chief sway. One of the strangest of her shrines lies at Ewawfe, in friendly nearness to church and school. Between them, more to the rear is a great, open shed, with elaborately fringed, corrugated iron roof. Beneath this are several clay pillars of the Ibudu type, before one of which some beautifully wrought torque-like bronze manillas lie amid a heap of smaller ones. A few yards off stands a small mud hut containing a figure of Ale indescribably gruesome with its strangely-shaped skull, its folds upon folds of blood-stained linen and the streams of blood poured and splashed over the supporting logs and the skulls and clumps of feathers thickly strewn around. At this town it is customary to store all seed yams, etc., in the huts built for carrying out the rites of the ancestors--to whose care the germs of the new season’s crops are thus entrusted. Indeed, amongst many peoples here, the dead are thought to be more powerful even than Ale for the granting of fertility, especially as regards the crops, which is not surprising since they are supposed to live under the ground between incarnations on earth. In most parts, however, the fertility of the marriage bed, of the byre and of the crops is deemed to be chiefly due to the great Mother Goddess of the Earth. The duty is usually delegated to some of her subordinate tribes of Jujus and it is the members of one of these who are responsible for placing in the womb of the mother the spirit of the being about to be born on the earth plane. There is no ignorance here as to the necessary part played by the human father and mother, but their action would be fruitless and conception impossible without the help of the gods or jujus. At the neighbouring village of Ogbokoro the chiefs were anxiously waiting to speak of a serious trouble which had befallen them. One of the schoolboys had broken the fence round the principal Ale shrine and stolen therefrom a quantity of manillas out of the mass of such which were to be seen, half smothered in feathers and congealed blood, upon the mud altar. On being assured that such desecration would be severely punished, the head chief answered: This is a good word for us. We feel this thing very much. Ale is our mother and our god; all that we have comes from her, and without her gifts we must indeed be lost. As already mentioned, it is indicative of the reverence in which the Earth Goddess is held, that only the head chief of a town can aspire to be her priest. It is not without significance that the same rule holds with regard to the principal shrines of Amade Onhia. Only after pilgrimage to Ozozo may subsidiary lodges be erected, while the shrine of Ale is usually found nearby.