Research source

Day before the ceremony the elders catch a mole-like rodent called huku (Tachyoryctes sp.), put it alive in a…

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 89
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-25

Record summary

day before the ceremony the elders catch a mole-like rodent called huku (Tachyoryctes sp.), put it alive in a cooking pot with some sweet potatoes, and cork up the mouth of the pot

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 only

day before the ceremony the elders catch a mole-like rodent called huku (Tachyoryctes sp.), put it alive in a cooking pot with some sweet potatoes, and cork up the mouth of the pot. The huku must be caught near the patient’s village. Next morning the athuri ya ukuu arrive with a medicine man belonging to another clan and a male sheep is killed; the elders then take the huku out of the pot and make passes all over the patient’s body with the live animal and now take the huku and samples of various kinds of native food, beads, etc., and proceed to the place where the corpse of the person who imposed the kirume has been buried or thrown out. Another sheep is taken with this party and also a small cooking pot; upon reaching the spot referred to the second sheep is killed and some of its fat is cooked in the pot.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This 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 only

Lattice 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.