ABSTRACT
[Note. The Leŋge, like so many other tribes, have a genius for religion, exhibited sometimes in debased forms, such as demonology, but attaining its highest expression in ancestor worship. The spirits of ancestors in the direct male line are all-important, and their service and propitiation are the main concern of every religious mind. There is no belief in the existence of a Supreme Spirit, but, like the Thoŋga, the Leŋge refer vaguely to a power named Tilo or Heaven, which, however, does not seem to exercise much influence upon their lives. They believe, like some other South African tribes, that the first man and the first woman ‘came out of a reed’, and they will, if asked, show the kind of reed, apparently some species of bamboo. The common idea of origin connected with a reed suggests the possibility of a common origin for these tribes in Upper Egypt in prehistoric times. In the following pages I have tried to trace the outline of the old religion of the Leŋge. Pagan soil can ‘suffer a change into something rich and strange’ when the seeds of Christianity are planted in it, as the lives of many Leŋge bear witness.]
