1. 4. XXI. THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR ioi

from which side it is approached. The local devil has the form of a short fat white snake about two feet long with a large black woolly head the size of a man's fist and enormous eyes. An old woman

living at GulH, near by, used to be the familiar of this monster. Her position was hereditary, but she died leaving no descendants and her functions are therefore in abeyance.

The Niamaton on reaching the stone would slaughter a sheep^

in such a way that its blood would gush over the stone and would drag the carcase across the path which he was to take. The old woman would remain behind after he had passed to make up cakes of blood and flour and cut the meat into strips and arrange these morsels on

or by the stone for the snake. She would at the same time hold con-

verse with the snake and intercede with it for the Niamaton's immunity from all harm, and the snake would appear to her and talk

to her and grant her request. She would address it as "ya waladi" ("my child") and pet it and place it in the shade.

In the summer offerings are made to this same snake to ensure good rains for the crops. The local sheikh and elders perform this ceremony in lack of the old woman familiar, but, of course, the snake would not appear to them or hold any communication with them.

In another case, in Kerne district, it was an old hardz tree by

the edge of a khor running through a gap in some low hills, and not

a stone, under which the local snake lay hid, I also heard of other

similar sites in western Darfur and at Dobo on the eastern side of Marra, but I did not visit them.

Sacrificial offerings of a rather different nature are common among

the Fur, and especially at Gebel Si, the Karakirit district. These

are made by persons about to start on a journey or any perilous

venture and are designed to placate the local demons. The inter-

mediaries in all such cases are the old women of the village.

The behef in the "sacred" snake is not confined to Darfur,

Professor Seligman and I found traces of it in northern Kordofan some years ago at Kaga, where the local "Nuba" believed a great snake to live in the hill called Abu 'Ali and had once been accustomed

to send their women to placate it^, and the Abyssinian Gregorius in

the seventeenth century told Job Ludolfus, the Treasurer to the

Elector Palatine, that it was an old belief in Abyssinia that the ancient "Ethiopians worship'd for their god a huge serpent, in that language

call'd Arwe-midre^." The same cult exists in southern Kordofan

^ As a rule, the sheep must be "akhdar" in colour, but I am not sure if this

is universal.

^ For details re this and re the cult at Kaga see Seligman, Art. "Nuba" in Hastings's Encyclopaedia. ' Ludolfus, Bk. ii, Ch. i, and Bk. in, Ch. vi.