Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/269

The spot where she was caught proved the death-trap of many a poor victim, and is now believed to be haunted. Very few Basuto are brave enough to pass there after dark. Strange tales have been told by those who have done so. Shadowy forms have been seen seated in a ring, and the sound of their voices chanting weird songs, has been heard, while from the centre of the ring smoke has been seen to arise, and even the cries and groans of the victims have been heard. A horseman, too, has been seen to ride up in haste, though no sound of hoofs has disturbed the night; but on his approach the ghostly company has dispersed. Soon after we went to Leribe, and long before I knew anything of this mysterious horseman, my husband and I were returning home after dark one evening on horseback through this identical pass. The moon shone fitfully through the hurrying clouds, and a damp mist was rising from the marshy ground. While our horses were walking through the soft ground at the bottom of the pass I looked up and saw what I took to be a native riding a grey horse. I asked my husband what a Mosuto was doing, riding in such a nasty part at that time of night; but as he saw no one, and we neither of us heard any sound, I concluded I had been mistaken, and thought no more of it until three years later, when for the first time I heard the story of the ghostly rider. I have been shown one or two other spots which are visited in a similar manner by "ghosts," and which are known to have been the haunts of cannibals. In the north of Basutoland there still live two old people, a man and a woman, between whom no connection or relationship exists, but each has been in youth a cannibal, and in the eyes of the Basuto they are each branded with the evidence of their crimes, for each has white spots on the skin which are gradually increasing in size—a sure sign in the eyes of the people of cannibalism, as these spots were not there in childhood nor yet in