is good
reason to think that among many tribes and nations of the world the
history of a god, if it could be recovered, would be found to be the
history of a spirit who served his apprenticeship as a ghost before he
was promoted to the rank of deity.

[Sidenote: Kai lads at circumcision supposed to be swallowed by a
monster. Bull-roarers.]

Before quitting the Kai tribe I will mention that they, like the other
tribes on this coast, practise circumcision and appear to associate the
custom more or less vaguely with the spirits of the dead. Like their
neighbours, they impress women with the belief that at circumcision the
lads are swallowed by a monster, who can only be induced to disgorge
them by the bribe of much food and especially of pigs, which are
accordingly bred and kept nominally for this purpose, but really to
furnish a banquet for the men alone. The ceremony is performed at
irregular intervals of several years. A long hut, entered through a high
door at one end and tapering away at the other, is built in a lonely
part of the forest. It represents the monster which is to swallow the
novices in its capacious jaws. The process of deglutition is represented
as follows. In front of the entrance to the hut a scaffold is erected
and a man mounts it. The novices are then led up one by one and passed
under the scaffold. As each comes up, the man overhead makes a gesture
of swallowing, while at the same time he takes a great gulp of water
from a coco-nut flask. The trembling novice is now supposed to be in the
maw of the monster; but a pig is offered for his redemption, the man on
the scaffold, as representative of the beast, accepts the offering, a
gurgling sound is heard, and the water which he had just gulped descends
in a jet on the novice, who now goes free. The actual circumcision
follows immediately on this impressive pantomime. The monster who
swallows the lads is named Ngosa, which means "Grandfather"; and the
same name is given to the bull-roarers which are swung at the festival.
The Kai bull-roarer is a lance-shaped piece of palm-wood, more or less
elaborately carved, which being swung at the end of a string emits the
usual droning, booming sound. When they are not in use, the instruments
are kept, carefully wrapt up, in the men's house, which no woman may
enter. Only the old men have the right to undo these precious bundles
and take out the sacred bull-roarers. Women, too, are strictly excluded
from the nei