" The Byugas hold these people in great
reverence, and say that they 'talk with God.'
Mr. Long, in his history of the West Indies, states that, under the
general name of Obi-men is also included the class of _Myal_ men, or
those who, by means of a narcotic poison, made with the juice of an herb
(said to be the branched Calalue, a species of solanum) which occasions
a trance of a certain duration, endeavour to convince the deluded
spectators of their power to reanimate dead bodies.
Additional particulars of this superstition preserved by Labat,
Edwards, and others, are to be joined with those now produced;[138] but
after all, the questions to be solved are, whether Obi, Mandinga, and
_gree gree_, are usually words of similar import, and whether those who
are conversant in them are all alike, priests of one system of religious
faith and worship, or whether the one does not belong to the worship of
a good power, and the other to that of an evil one.
It is remarkable, that while the Etymology of _Obi_ has been sought in
the names of ancient deities of Egypt, and in that of the serpent in the
language of the coast, the actual name of the evil deity or _Devil_, in
the same language, appears to have escaped attention.
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