PURRAH, PURROII

This article appears in Volume V22, Page 666 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PRE-PYR

PURRAH, PURROII , or Pogo, a

secret

SECRET (Lat. secretum, hidden, concealed)

society of Sierra Leone, West Africa. Only males are admitted to its ranks, but two other affiliated and

secret

SECRET (Lat. secretum, hidden, concealed)

associations exist, the Yassi and the Bundu, the first of which is nominally reserved for females, but members of the Purrah are admitted to certain ceremonies. All the female members of the Yassi must be also members of the Bundu, which is strictly reserved to women. Of the three, the Purrah is by far the most important. The entire native population is governed by its code of laws. It primarily represents a type of freemasonry, a "friendly" society to which even infants are temporarily admitted, the ceremony in their case consisting merely of carrying them into the Purrah "

bush

BUSH

" and out again. But this side of the Purrah is merged in its larger objects as represented by its two

great

GREAT

aspects, the religious and the civil. Under the former, boys join it at puberty, while under the latter it is practically the native governing

body

BODY

, making laws, deciding on war and peace, &c.
The Purrah has its

special

SPECIAL

ritual and language, tattooing and symbols, but details are unknown, as the oath of secrecy is always kept. It meets usually in the dry season, between the months of October and May. The rendezvous is in " the

bush

BUSH

," an enclosure, separated into apartments by mats and roofed only by the over-hanging trees, serving as a club-

house

HOUSE
HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
Gothic
- GOTHIC
it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)

. There are three grades, the first for chiefs and " big men," the second for fetish-priests and the third for the crowd. The ceremonies of the Purrah are presided over by the Purrah " devil," a man in fetish dress, who addresses the meeting through a long tube of

wood

.
The Purrah can place its taboo on anything or anybody; and as no native would venture to'defy its order, much trouble has been caused where the taboo has been laid upon crops. In 1897 the British or local government was compelled to pass a

special

SPECIAL

ordinance absolutely forbidding the

imposition

IMPOSITION (from Lat. imponere, to place or lay upon)

of the taboo on all indigenous products. Of the affiliated societies the Yassi appears to some extent to be an association for providing men and women, who believe themselves ill through "fetish," with medical treatment, on payment of certain fees. The women's Bundu is in many ways a replica of the men's Purrah, though without political power.
See T. J. Alldridge, The Sherbro and its Hinterland (1901).

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