BLACK MAGIC.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 464, 29 July 1909, Page 4

BLACK MAGIC.

Imray in Kipling’s story patted the child of his native butler on the head, and the child caught fever and died, and the child’s father killed Imray for itndulging in what he considered witchcraft.. The Rev Copeland King, who has come, back from New Guinea with interesting stories about native sorcery, might not agree with the man who found Imray’s remains, that the affair that led up to the tragedy was a coincidence. Mr King seriously believes there is something in the witchcraft of the Papuans. “I reported a native once to the Government,” he told an interviewer, “and he was given a term of imprisonment, . The native said that when he came out he would take it out of me. Somehow or other I had forgotten all about it, but when he came out he paid us a visit, and I did my best to entertain him. Next day I went down with fever.” The native attributed this to witchcraft, and the missionary does not seem to be certain that there was not something occult about it. ‘‘What do Sydney people think of fortunetelling ?” he asked. ‘‘They know it is a fraud, yet they think there is something in it.” To show the material Papuan sorcerers have to work on, Mr King relates the following story: —‘ ‘At Ambasi a little time ago there was a dispute between two villagers. Both parties afterwards came to me to have their w<unds dressed. All the morning I was staunching blood and getting hair off where the men had been clubbed. Both parties, I noticed, were careful to collect every scrap of hair, and even the cottonwool I had been using. Each side feared that the other might use any scraps left behind to work evil by witchcraft.” A native constable was escorting a prisoner to the place of trial, when he,discovered that his charge was a sorcerer with several deaths at his door. The constable concluded that it would be dangerous to take him further, so he tied a rope round his neck, and lowered him into ten feet of water, informing the authorities subsequently of what he had done and his reason for it. An educated Papuan might, however, retort on his teachers by citing the case of a girl who, the other day in enlightened Britain, applied to a ladies’ paper for a recipe for a love-philtre that would bring back an estranged admirer.