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Updated: June 2, 2025
St Jago." My heart jumped against my ribs. Here's an unexpected chance, thought I. "But, Peter, how in the name of mumbo jumbo, came you here?"
'Were you ever there? I demanded. 'No, said the postilion, 'but I heard plenty of Mumbo Jumbo when I was a boy. 'I wish you would tell us something about yourself. I believe that your own real history would prove quite as entertaining, if not more, than that which you imagined about us. 'I am rather tired, said the postilion, 'and my leg is rather troublesome.
Let me not omit to mention while I am on this chapter of Brutality wreaked by Christian men upon poor Heathen savages, for many of them were not many weeks from Guinea and Old Calabar, where they had been worshiping Mumbo Jumbo, and making war upon one another in their own Pagan fashion that I have known Planters even more refined in their cruelty.
‘But one good resulted from this affair; there was no presentation of our family to the Holy Father, for old Mumbo was so frightened by my outrageous looks that he was laid up for a week, as I was afterwards informed.
'Oh the strange ways of the black men who lived on that shore, of which my brother used to tell us at home selling their sons, daughters, and servants for slaves, and the prisoners taken in battle, to the Spanish captains, to be carried to Havannah, and when there, sold at a profit, the idea of which, my brother said, went to the hearts of our own captains, who used to say what a hard thing it was that free-born Englishmen could not have a hand in the traffic, seeing that it was forbidden by the laws of their country; talking fondly of the good old times when their forefathers used to carry slaves to Jamaica and Barbadoes, realising immense profit, besides the pleasure of hearing their shrieks on the voyage; and then the superstitions of the blacks, which my brother used to talk of; their sharks' teeth, their wisps of fowls' feathers, their half-baked pots full of burnt bones, of which they used to make what they called fetish, and bow down to, and ask favours of, and then, perhaps, abuse and strike, provided the senseless rubbish did not give them what they asked for; and then, above all, Mumbo Jumbo, the grand fetish master, who lived somewhere in the woods, and who used to come out every now and then with his fetish companions; a monstrous figure, all wound round with leaves and branches, so as to be quite indistinguishable, and, seating himself on the high seat in the villages, receive homage from the people, and also gifts and offerings, the most valuable of which were pretty damsels, and then betake himself back again, with his followers, into the woods.
You remember, when I told you my story in that dingle of yours, that I mentioned a young woman, my fellow-servant when I lived with the English family in Mumbo Jumbo's town, and how she and I, when our foolish governors were thinking of changing their religion, agreed to stand by each other, and be true to old Church of England, and to give our governors warning, provided they tried to make us renegades.
There are sufferers in that cause as in the other: the negroes in the service of Mumbo Jumbo tattoo and drill themselves with burning skewers with great fortitude; and we read that the priests in the service of Baal gashed themselves and bled freely. You who can smash the idols, do so with a good courage; but do not be too fierce with the idolaters, they worship the best thing they know.
Oh, it was a fine sermon that my young master preached, and sorry I am that the Father of the Fetish, old Mumbo, did not hear it. The elder sister looked ashamed, but the youngest, who was very weak, did nothing but wring her hands, weep and bewail the injury which had been done to the dear image.
The ceremony begins with songs and dances, which last till midnight, by which time Mumbo Jumbo has fixed upon his unfortunate victim. She is immediately seized, stripped, tied to a post, and scourged with Mumbo's rod, amid the shouts and derision of the whole assembly. No wonder that Mumbo Jumbo is held in great awe by the women!
The mere possibility of one of their children being swash-buckler to Mumbo Jumbo on the high Barbary shore has always been a source of heart-breaking to my poor parents. What, then, would they not undergo if they knew for certain that their other child was swash-buckler to Mumbo Jumbo up here? Thereupon he asked me, even as you did some time ago, what I meant by Mumbo Jumbo?
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