ABSTRACT
CHILDREN are very much desired by the Leŋge. Women who have no children are sometimes despised and put away by their husbands. A woman wishing to have a child will pay a special visit to the anyaŋga of the divining bones 1 (ya tiɬolo), or more usually her father or mother will go on her behalf, and the anyaŋga will declare that a sacrifice must be offered to the spirits (ʂikwembu). The divining bones reveal this fact. Women who have not wished to go to a heathen anyaŋga have sometimes asked me if there is any muri (medicine, in this case, drug) which they can take for the purpose. It may be that some ancestral spirit is angry and must be appeased by an adequate sacrifice; or if the woman herself is ‘possessed by’ spirits of Ndau or Dgoni origin, they may be preventing conception, or if she is pregnant, delaying the birth, because some act of sacrifice is lacking.
