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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1956-09-06, Page 3Killers Wear Leopard Skins As the assistant district com- missioner went into his office his native clerk greeted him with: "Boss, a leopard has killed a boy In the Imperri chiefdom. Bad' business, boss!" - The A.D.C. looked at the man's rolling eyeballs and slumped Into his creaking chair. Well, he considered, there were plenty of bush leopards in the vicinity. He'd seen the traps himself — some with leopards caught in them. But still, in the Imperri coun- try there were leopards of an - ether sort that also killed. Human leopards. He decided to investigate. Eight years in Sierre Leone had taught the A.D.C. a good deal about the ghastly aspects of native superstition and voo- doo. He knew all about the secret society initiated by medicine menwhich needed human fat for a revolting fetish called Bor- Pima. Each member of the soci- ety possessed a bag containing dried cock's blood, the white of en egg, parts of both a man's and a woman's bodies and hu- man blood, all ceremoniously mixed and wrapped in a leather ease. Borflma was supposed to bring good fortune to its possessor and misfortune to his enemies. But after a time Borflma was con- sidered to lose much of its power —and that meant the leopard men had to go out killing again to get fresh human fat to re- store its vitality. The killers. usually made a meal of the re- mains of their victims. The A.D.C. also knew about the fiendish Tongo Dancers who claimed to have the power of discovering criminals by magic ritual and crazy dances. The A,D.C. soon had the story from the villagers. Late one night e terrible moaning roused the sleeping village. And soon every- one was yelling murder. For there, before the door of his hut, lay Yagba, nephew of one of the village headmen. Had a.leopard done it? Some villagers had got a glimpse of the killers—two men disguised In leopard skins. They had scur- ried into the bush at the first scream of alarm, abandoning the body of their victim, which they bad intended to cut up to 're- plenish their Borfulla bags. What was the story behind this new crime of the human* leopards? As he finally got it out of an informer, with many bribes, it was a tale of horror such as to shock even the hardened A.D.C. The year of that dreadful Im- perri case was 1912. It was a July day when a santiggi—a human Leopard Society messenger came to the village and spoke to one of the headmen before departing at a trot. The messenger had left word that the president was calling a large meeting for that night in the Porro bush outside the vil- lage. Near midnight the president, a tribal chief, had arrived with his staff in the bush clearing. There was only the moon to light the large squatting assem- bly of human leopards. "Borflma," he announced, "is hungry. Borfima needs human fat and human blood. If Bore p:a does not get these, there will be no more magic." That was the crux of it—who should be chosen for human sacrifice to Borfima? "I say Yagba," suggested one of the company. "You say Yagba?" protested the village headman, "but Yagba fs my nephew!" "Babe; 7, Swings at $ 64,000 MARJORIE (BASE) IN ARMS: Morton Garmise holds the seven-year-old "Babe Ruth" con- testant for a family conference with her broth er, Andy, 11, and her mother, Felicia Garmise. by Dick Kleiner NEA .Staff Correspondent Stalling off bedtime is an old trick for kids. But Marjorie Garmise used the time she pro- moted so well that she became the youngest contestant ever on "The $64.000 Question", She's just seven. Marjorie is an active little girl "Tomboy is an under- statement," says her mother— with a baseball -happy 111/2 - year -old brother. Ordinarily, she's not much for books and reading. When she reached the that she wanted to stay up "just 10 minutes more", she began using the dodge that she'd like ' to read. Her mother would say it was all right if she actually did read. So Marjorie had to find a book. And it was only natural that she'd dip into her brother's baseball boo&s. The one that fascinated her most was a story about Babe Ruth—"she's literal- ly read it 30 or 40 times," says Mrs. Milton Garmise. In fact, she's virtually memor- ized the entire book. "She would follow me around the house," Mrs. Gamise says, "offering to recite parts of the book. Honestly, it got aggravat- ing .I'd try to introduce her to little girl things, but she just wanted to read that book about Babe Ruth." She read other baseball books, too. And one night her parents were joking about how much baseball she knew. Mrs. Garmise said she thought Marjorie knew more than some of the contest- ants on "The $64,000 Question". Garmise wasn't so sure. One led to another and pretty soon Mrs. Garmise • was writing a postcard to the program in New York. "It was strictly a joke," she says, And then they were called down to New York for an inter- view and it wasn't a joke any more. "At first we had our doubts about her as a contestant" says Mert Koplin of the show's Fro - auction staff. "We felt she might be too young. But she has so much poise that we figured we'd take a chance. We might have forgotten her, though, except she almost gave us all the measles." It turned out she was getting the measles when she carne in for the first interview, Mrs. Gar - mise, a day or so later, wrote to Koplin thanking him for his courtesy and saying that if any of then got the measles, it would be a gift from Marjorie. Nobody dict, though. Marjorie was "the calmest one in the theater" the night of her first appearance. She sat in the consolation. Cadillac in the wings before she went on for a while. Then she discovered that some of the stagehands were watching a ball game on TV, and she went over and watched some of that. The Garmise family went out to dinner just before show time; none of them felt much like eat- ing except Marjorie who tore into a steak. At this point, Marjorie has two ambitions. She wants to play Little League ball; she thinks it's unfair that they only let boys like her brother, Andy, on the teams. She hopes maybe her TV appearance will wake them up to relaxing the rules. Her other ambition is to meet the members of her favorite team, the" Brooklyn Dodgers. She saw her first game this spring. When the schedule first came out, she studied it carefully and checked off the game she wanted to see. It was a game against the New York Giants. Mrs. Garmise put her on the train to New York and an aunt met her and took her to the game. Marjorie had picked a dilly — it was the day Carl Erskine tossed a no-hitter, Even before •she began read- ing about Babe Ruth, Marjorie was on her way to being a base- ball student. Andy started her off. He collected baseball cards and would give his kid sister his cast-offs. Then she began her own collection. "My house is just full of those cards every- where," Mrs, Garmise sighs. Mrs. Garmise knows nothing about baseball; in fact, she's never even seen a game, The kid's father, an engineer now working as an estimator with a sheet metal firm, likes the game but admits his children know more about it than he does, Both of them say they'll be happy when Marjorie turns to more normal pursuits for a girl. Her tomboyness—she's an ex- cellent swimmer and likes most sports, besides baseball—is ome- thing they are sure will pass. But meanwhile it's pretty strong- ly entrenched. At the moment, she figures when she grows up she'll be a ball player. "I suppose," Mrs. Garmise says, hopefully, "she'll get over it" "You like to take his place?" suggested the president. Before that threat the uncle stood down. After all, he had taken the fearful oath of the society. It wags a pity, for Yagba was a nice lad, but there it was, And so Yagba was found dy- ing that night before his hut. He had been stabbed in the neck. But the job had been bungled. His death moans had aroused the village. The A.D.C. had enough to go on. There was a mass arrest, followed by a mass trial. Six 01 the Human Leopard Society were convicted of the murder of Yagba and hanged, the rest were sentenced to life imprisonment. In the Freetown United Breth- ren in Christ Mission, one of the most eloquent preachers was a native of the colony. He had been converted and sent to Eng- land to study for the ministry and had been ordained. He re- turned to become a shining light in the religious life of the capi- tal. One day in 1909 word came to Freetown from .the Yandehun chiefdom of yet another human leopard murder. This time the victim was a little native girl. She had been lured into the bush, killed and cut up. Many Borfimas needed replenishing. Every memberdeparted with his piece. But there were other members not present whose Borfimas needed human fat and blood. Alnd presently sweating runners arrived in Freetown, carrying leather bags slung over their bare shoulders. One went to the house of the native schoolmaster; another called at the residence of the native parson. Was that possible? 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Incredible as it seemed, it was true. The Church had ordained into its ministry an active mem- ber of the Human Leopard So- ciety! Spies and informers were the chief instruments of the white man's administration of the col- ony. A certain man under suspicion of being a human leopard was spied on. The spy reported that he had seen the man's wife leave the hut at dawn carrying a large pot. He said he had startled her, when she had dropped the pot, which, he found, contained the gruesome Borfima mixture. An A.D.C. had the man brought in for questioning. A human leopard? He denied it emphatically. But what about the pot? "I am a sick man," he ex- plained. "I had a dream that made me sick. A snake swal- lowed me up to the waist. In the morning I couldn't move. I was like that for fear years. Legs no use. I heard of a Mori man. I sent for him. He made me this fine medicine for £3. That is what was in the pot my wife was carrying. Ah! If the Mori man was not now dead, he would tell you, white daddy." It was a clever invention. But it didn't wash, for the Mori man's medicine was identical with the Borfima medicine. The ghastly ingredients included hu- man remains. And so another human leopard went behind bars. When too many villagers dis- appeared at night' to be blamed on the bush leopards, the word always went round that the Human Leopard Society was re- sponsible. But who could tell who among the villagers were members, since the society was top secret? On such occasions the vil- lagers called in the Tongo Dan- cers. These strange men were reputed to be cannibals, like the human leopards. But they were used by villagers to winkle out the human leopards lurking in their midst. The Tongo Dancers were great On ceremonial. When they came to investigate a village, they set up a large encampment and ap- peared in all the splendour of bard skins. CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ARTICLES FOR SALE NEED a new roof? 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While dancing madly before the squatting villagers, the head- man would soddenly dart and stab a villager. Sometimes these wounds were at once fatal, al- ways they were serious. The. wounded one, or the slain, was the secret human leopard. At least, that is what the head Tongo dancer claimed. How Mandel Wrote Greatest Work Two hundred years ago in London, a man sat in the study of his Brook Street house . writing. A heavily built man in his middle fifties, he had hard- ly paused in his toil for over three weeks. The scattered sheets of music paper around him still bore traces of the sand with which they had been so hastily blotted. Even so that hand could scarcely keep pace with the powerfully driving imagination, and the music notes leaned forward on the pages with an almost symbolh,c.e, urgency. At one moment a sol' - vent, tiptoeing, in with a tray of chocolate had 'found his mos ter weeping. 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If we listen to Messiah with the musical ears of two hun- dred years ago, we can better understand how unconvention- ally yet surely Handel designed his masterpiece, The omission of the traditional final minuet to the overture, and its replace- ment by the accompanied reci- tative "Comfort ye" must have been completely unexpected 10 audiences of his day. The await- ed entry of the chorus in "And the Glory of the Lord" adds to its dramatic effectiveness . . It was a work apart — some in- ner urge had compelled him to write it. And so his last thought was to perform it for his own monetary gain, though at no other time in his career had he more need to recoup his finan- cial losses. He had, however, re- ceived an invitation from the Duke of Devonshire, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to visit Dublin, and had been specially asked to compose a new work to be performed for charity. At that time all the principal musi- cal societies of Dublin gave their performances for charitable ob- jects, and Handel therefore got in touch with the charity "for the benefit and enlargement of poor distressed prisoners for debt in the several marshalseart of the city of Dublin," There is something at once pathetic and inevitable that the bankrupt Handel should give his master. piece for his fellow -sufferers, for the crime of . insolvency of- ten received the harshest pun. ishments in those days. But Messiah was rarely to be per. formed for Hander's own bene- fit. It was his gift to the poor and oppressed of this world. And so in November 1741 Han- del set out on his journey to Dublin, staying at Chester until the winds became favourable for the crossing. —From "Messiah," by Julian Herbage. 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Get Dodd's kidney Pills now. 51 ISSUE 35 — 1950 er