It is indicative of the position of Ale that only the head chief of a town can aspire to become her priest. This is the case with all dominant Jujus; for instance, Otaminni at Opioro and Amade Onhia at Ozozo, the parent shrine of the Thunder God’s worship, from which all other centres of the cult derive their power. The following was the account given by the Omo Dim chief as to the erection of the Mbari house: ‘At the time of the new yam harvest the building is begun and, throughout the first part of the dry season, men and women, chosen for the purpose by the priest of Ale, work hard at beautifying and adorning it.’ Only those specially designated for this purpose may take part. Should anyone not called thereto by the priest attempt to share in the work, death would fall upon such unauthorised intruders as surely as that which overtook him who, of old, stretched forth a presumptuous hand to the Ark. Before the making of new farms the house must be finished and ready for the celebration of its strange rites. Later, when the germs of the new season’s crop--corn-grains, sections of yam-tubers and seeds of pumpkins, great and small--have been confided to the dark bosom of Mother Earth, men and maids of the region gather together bringing gifts, ‘rack upon rack of dried fish, goats, sheep and fowls without stint, palm-wine in plenty and all else needed for a great feast.’ Of the maids, who have undergone initiatory ceremonies, a certain number are chosen by the Ezale (head priest of Ale) to act as priestesses for the rites about to be held in and around the Mbari shrine. As to the nature of the ceremonies, the natives were naturally reluctant to speak; but Mr. Whitehouse, a former District Commissioner, in a short account published in the _Journal of the African Society_,[2] declares them to have been of licentious character. Subsequent enquiries confirmed this, and the nature of the rites is borne out by the groups of clay figures set both round the central shrine and beneath the roof depending from the inner side of the wall, which encircles the whole erection cloister-wise. These images represent, with remarkable fidelity, the life-cycle of bird, beast and human being, from the act of procreation--depicted with astounding naïveté--to the lying down, when life is done, for a last long rest in the arms of the Earth Mother.