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The chiefs, in particular, were covered with gris-gris and fetishes, a mixture of feathers and other preposterous materials, calculated to obliterate any trace of human appearance, and possessing the virtue, as they conceived, of shielding them from danger.
The heat of the climate renders cloathing an incumberance, and occasions a carelessness with regard to their dwellings: for the former, they require only a stripe of linen, and their gris-gris; while a building of mud, covered with an interwoven and thatched roof, forms the latter, which is reared with little labour, and, when circumstances require it, is abandoned without much regret.
During the repast, the minister, who had the contracts between the Prince and the two Frenchmen, took from his great gris-gris, or pocket book, that of Mr.
"Come in, my pretty one!" entreated Tata, stretching out his brawn arms. "You will die of laughing if you hear Gris-Gris to-night such a song!" "A pretty song, yes for a pigsty!" said Cigarette, with a glance into the chamber; and she shook his hand off her, and went on down the street.
Although people of culture, and the scholastic theory of religions, may distinguish indirect and respectful veneration from direct worship, yet it cannot be denied that the majority of the faithful directly adore the image. The general belief in relics, consisting of bones, hair, clothes, etc., is plainly an evolution of the amulets and gris-gris of savages.
Solemn palaver is always held upon these occasions, and their gris-gris makers, fetish men, and priests, exorcise their absurd decorations, which, in their estimation, operate as guardian angels in the hour of difficulty and peril. Having occasion to visit a gentleman resident at some distance, we left our canoes at Rochell, and proceeded on foot.
The Moors, like the Mahometan negroes, are for the most part, provided with a larger or smaller number of gris-gris, a kind of talisman consisting in words, or verses copied from the Coran, to which they ascribe the power of securing them against diseases, witchcraft and accidents, and which they buy of their priests or Marabous.
Trial by red water consists in making the accused drink a quantity of water, into which is infused the poisonous juice of the melley or gris-gris tree; this is prepared by these equitable judges, and applied upon the same fraudulent principles as in the trial by the ordeal of fire; it is, however, less resorted to.
He commonly wears dresses of white or blue cotor, or silk, with a great many gris-gris, covered with plates of gold or silver, sewed about his dresses. I sat down on one side of him, and my landlord on the other side. Park, and which he promised to send him." He said, "Is the Governor well?"
In these figures the amulet, talisman, or gris-gris of savages especially consisted; portraits, however rude, of animals, monsters, of the human form as a whole or in parts, as in the universal phallic superstitions.
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