The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
Further, the prayers and offerings of the individual peasants on the
occasion of the yam festival are described as follows. “In the evening,
when the town is swept clean, the people go to the fields to fetch yams,
which, however, they may not yet bring into the town and therefore they
hide them in the forest. As soon as the high priest quits the town next
morning to go to the sacrificial place of his god, the women set out to
fetch the yams which they had deposited. Now they begin to cook. Many
people kill fowls or goats, and others buy fish for the festival. When the
yams are sodden, a little is broken off, mixed with oil, and laid,
together with uncooked yams, on the ground at the entrance to the
homestead. Thereby the house-father says: ‘That belongs to all those
(gods) who abide at the fence.’ He does the same under the door of the
house and says: ‘That belongs to all those (gods) who dwell with me.’ Then
he goes to the loom, and brings it its offering, and says: ‘That belongs
to all the “Artificers” who have helped me in weaving.’ After that he lays
all his charms on a mat spread in the house, and brings them also their
offering, and speaks with them.”
“Another account describes the priestly functions of the house-father
still more fully. Every house-father takes a raw piece of yam and goes
with it to his loom (_agbati_) and prays: ‘May the Artificers take this
yam and eat! When they practise their art, may it prosper!’ Again he takes
a raw yam and goes with it under the house-door and prays: ‘O my
guardian-spirit (_aklama_) and all ye gods who pay heed to this house,
come and eat yams! When I also eat of them, may I remain healthy and
nowhere feel pain! May my housemates all remain healthy!’ After he has
invoked their protection on his family, he takes a cooked yam, crumbles it
on a stone, and mixes it with red oil. With this mixture he goes again to
the loom and prays as before. But even that is not the end of the worship
of the Artificers. He again crumbles a cooked yam, but this time he does
not mix it with red oil; he goes to the entrance of the homestead and
prays again to the loom: ‘He among the Artificers who does not relish yams
mixed with oil, let him come and take the white yam and eat it!’ From
there he goes again under the house-door and prays: ‘He of my guardian
gods and he of the watchers of the house who likes not yams mixed with
oil, let him come and take the white yam from my hand and eat!’ From the
house-door he steps into the midst of the chamber and says: ‘He who
relishes not the yams mixed with oil, may eat the white; he who relishes
not the white may eat the red; and he who relishes not the red may eat the
uncooked!’ With this prayer he has completed his duties as house-priest.
Just as the weaver prays to his loom, so the hunter prays to his musket,
the smith to his hammer and anvil, and the carpenter to his plane and saw.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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