Kikuyu the birth of twins is considered unlucky excepting in the case of a woman who has borne other children;…
- 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 91
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
Kikuyu the birth of twins is considered unlucky excepting in the case of a woman who has borne other children; the younger the woman the more unlucky the occurrence, and if the first birth is of twins, no medicine man can remove the evil, and the only course is to throw the twins into the bush or to give them to anothe…
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 onlyKikuyu the birth of twins is considered unlucky excepting in the case of a woman who has borne other children; the younger the woman the more unlucky the occurrence, and if the first birth is of twins, no medicine man can remove the evil, and the only course is to throw the twins into the bush or to give them to another man of a different tribe or clan. In Kenya Province it is said that twins are sold to other tribes, but in Kyambu district the elders held this to be a bad custom. The foster-father becomes sole owner of the twins and if they are girls receives dowry for them. In such case if the twins were the first birth of a woman, the father can accept no part of the dowry, but if they were second or subsequent births, he receives the whole dowry from the foster-father and returns ten goats to him.
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.
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