“Now, while the free people begin to cook the yams so soon as the priest has left the town, the slaves of the Earth Gods, the _Trõkluwo_, must first as children perform their duties to the priest of their gods. Each of these children receives from his parents on the morning of the Yam Festival two pieces of yam, which he brings to the priest of his god. The priest cuts off a small piece of the yam and divides the piece again into four pieces. The child kneels before him and lolls out his tongue. Holding two of these pieces of yam in his hands, the priest utters a prayer over the child and touches his tongue five times with the pieces of yam. Then the child stretches his hands out, each of which the priest touches five times with the same pieces of yam and prays as before. Then he touches both feet of the child five times and prays for the third time. He takes half of the cowry-shells which the child has brought, fastens them on a string, and hangs it round the child’s neck. Thereby the child gets leave to eat new yams. “After all these preparations the yams are pounded into a mash, and every one calls his brother, that he may eat with him. When the meal is over, the people are called together to amuse themselves and to drink palm wine. In the afternoon every one bathes, puts on a new garment, and girds himself with a new loin-cloth.”(193) (M51) The Ashantees celebrate the festival of the new yams early in September; until it is over none of the people may taste of the new yams. “The Yam Custom,” we are told, “is like the Saturnalia; neither theft, intrigue, nor assault are punishable during the continuance, but the grossest liberty prevails, and each sex abandons itself to its passions.” An eye-witness has described the scene at Coomassie, the capital: “The next morning the King ordered a large quantity of rum to be poured into brass pans, in various parts of the town; the crowd pressing around, and drinking like hogs; freemen and slaves, women and children, striking, kicking, and trampling each other under foot, pushed head foremost into the pans, and spilling much more than they drank. In less than an hour, excepting the principal men, not a sober person was to be seen, parties of four, reeling and rolling under the weight of another, whom they affected to be carrying home; strings of women covered with red paint, hand in hand, falling down like rows of cards; the commonest mechanics and slaves furiously declaiming on state palavers; the most discordant music, the most obscene songs, children of both sexes prostrate in insensibility. All wore their handsomest cloths, which they trailed after them to a great length, in a drunken emulation of extravagance and dirtiness.” About a hundred persons, mostly culprits reserved for the purpose, used to be sacrificed at this festival in Coomassie. All the chiefs killed several slaves that their blood might flow into the hole from which the new yam was taken.