Note 263.6 — Chapter XII · TOTEMISM—THE BLOOD COVENANT—CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH SALIVA.

Barbot, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, relates that the interpreter of the king of Zair, in the Congo basin, after rubbing his hands and face in the dust, “took one of the royal feet in his hands, spat on the sole thereof, and licked it with his tongue.”263.6 This, if it stood alone, might be held, like the kissing of the pope’s toe, to express mere subservience; but other African customs put a different interpretation upon it. In north-eastern Senegambia if a Massasi be condemned for any offence by the chief and succeed, after sentence pronounced but before punishment, in spitting upon one of the princes, he is considered inviolable, and must be provided with food and lodging at the expense of the personage who has had the imprudence to come within range of his saliva.264.1 At Orango in the Bissagos Archipelago, off the Senegambian coast, the ceremony for sealing a friendship is to spit in one another’s hands.264.2 On the other side of the continent, a stranger can only be received among the Somali and neighbouring tribes as a guest of some family. When so received he is regarded for the time as one of the stock. And the ceremony of reception amongst the southern Somali and the Oromó, consists in the host’s spitting in his right hand and rubbing it on the stranger’s forehead as a sign of naturalisation.264.3 Contact with the saliva thus effects union for the moment as binding as the tie of kinship. We must surely give a similar meaning to the Somali rule which requires chance passers-by to spit on the bier at a funeral.265.1 If they thus unite themselves with the dead they will not, either upon him, or through him upon his surviving kindred, work any mischief by witchcraft. In the same way, too, a Kafir sorcerer offers from time to time his saliva to the spirits, that he may not lose his divining power. The king of the principal isle of the Bissagos Archipelago will not swallow a single drop of liquid without spitting the first mouthful over his fetishes or his amulets.265.2 And the Basuto diviners believe that if they neglect to spit before eating they will lose their power and become like other mortals.265.3 In these cases the spitting is manifestly intended to unite the sorcerer or king with the supernatural Power; and the Basuto form of the offering is perhaps a decayed one, which may be compared to the classical habit of spilling a drop or two of drink as a libation.