Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/221

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Obeah Worship in East and West Indies.
213

and no negro would willingly touch it, or be in the room with it. It is decorated with "senseh" fowls' feathers. The figure was sent out again to Jamaica, to form part of Mr. Thomas's collection of Obeah-charms at the Jamaica Exhibition, where at first it proved an attraction, and was described, outside the building, as "Amphitrite, the living Obeah"; but, after a short time (ten days or so), the Executive Committee requested it might be removed, as they considered it an "undesirable exhibit"—a recognition, no doubt, of its malign influences, which, fortunately, since its return to England, it no longer exerts.




Examples of Obeah Charms seized in Possession of various Obeah-men.

1. Horn of a young antelope, filled with snake and alligator fat, and a jegga, or small shell, with a threepenny-piece on top.

2. A number of blood-stained pieces of calabash strung together, called a "jeggeh".

3. A bag containing pieces of horse-shoe nails and broken bottle.

4. Phial containing quicksilver, the cork stuck with pins.

5. Packet containing myrrh, grey human hair, bladder, assafoetida, and herb roots.

6. Doll's head, bandaged with black cloth.




II.—Some East Indian Obeahs.

The Nilgiri mountains, in the south of the Madras Presidency, near the Western or Malabar Coast, have long been interesting to the antiquary and anthropologist as abounding in cairns and megalithic remains, and the abode of that remarkable picturesque race, the Todas, and other peculiar hill-tribes. They include a lofty and extensive table-land, with forest-clad sides descending steeply to the plains below. In 1849 I was for some time on these mountains,