He says that he was invested with this power when he was a stripling, soon after he had been circumcised
- Date of account
- Published 1922
- Source
- Bantu Beliefs and Magic With particular reference to the Kikuyu and Kamba tribes of Kenya Colony; together with some reflections on East Africa after the war
- Reference
- Bantu Beliefs and Magic With particular reference to the Kikuyu and Kamba tribes of Kenya Colony; together with some reflections on East Africa after the war · selected passage 14
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
He says that he was invested with this power when he was a stripling, soon after he had been circumcised
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyHe says that he was invested with this power when he was a stripling, soon after he had been circumcised. One morning he woke up with his two hands tightly clasped, and he passed blood instead of urine for nine days. A big medicine man named Wangnendu was then called in, a goat was killed, and the medicine man tied rukwaru bracelets of the skin on to the patient’s wrists. The hæmaturia then stopped, and his hands relaxed, and he was able to open them, and it was found that he had fifteen mbugu in each hand. These are white stones such as are used in a medicine man’s divination gourd. The medicine man then brought a small medicine gourd and placed the mbugu therein.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.