AMAZING FUNERAL

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1931, Page 3

AMAZING FUNERAL

LATE ASHANTI KING. L HEATHEN NATIVE RITES. London, July 14. How juju rites and horrifying ceremonial dances, to the'throbbing of native drums and. in the presence of stalwart, half-naked, executioners, with their knives slung in leopard-skin pouches about, their necks, mingled with the ex-King Prempeh at. Kumasi (Ashanti) is related by the correspondent of the Times. The circumstances were unprecedented in the history of the Christian Churcli. In the days of his power Prempeh watched hundreds of executions, the heads of those condemned sometimes falling by scores daily into a huge brass bowl. -

Prempeh was exiled to the Seychelles, an island group in the Indian Ocean, for 30 years, and there he became a Christian. He . returned to Ashanti in 1924, and since then had been a church warden and regularly attended the parish church in Kumasi. He erected a large crucifix at the Royal burying place at Bantema,. yvhich formerly was the place of execution, and bis greatest wish was fulfilled when his son John was ordained at the Seychilles, and returned to work among the natives of the Gold Coast. When Prempeh died, the natives desired to follow their own funeral customs, but the Anglicans were determined to do their utmost to give the ex-King a Christian burial. ,

The church people, therefore, formed a procession, headed by a man carrying a crucifix, and entered the apartment and crownd, and having on jwlld san-atoi where the body lay, ceremonially robed and crowned, and having on jewelled, sandals and gloves. It was lying in state in the presence of the Queenmother, and surrounded by women, heralds, drummers and executioners, all weeping, while enormous quantities of spirits were at hand. An executioner, holding a dagger in his outstretched hand, delivered a panegyric on Prempeh's past glories, amid the groans of the mourners/ When the Anglicans felt that -things were becoming too hysterical and exciting, they began to sing humns. Thus, all night long hynxns alternated with heathen customs, the blaring of horns, dances, and the beating of .tom-toms. The funeral service was begun in the afternoon«*at the parish church, from where the body, in a brass coffin, was carried . out amid a terrific uproar of native mourning, punctuated, by gunshots. The Anglican choir participated. The procession, in which John Prempeh joined, reached Bantema in pitch darkness, amid tropical rain. A clergyman read the burial service, and the Christians fell to their knees in silent prayer, everyone else present, including the executioners, also kneeling. The Anglicans later held a memorial service, where the preached impressed the heathens present by adopting the executioners’ style of panegyric, but eulogising Prempeh’s Christian achieve- 1 meats.

From 1821 to the end of the last century the Kingdom of Ashanti was the scene of one war after another, and many battles were fought in which a handful of 'British, armed with rifles, defeated hordes of savages. The end came in 1896 with the “Bloodless War.” From his golden throne King Prcmeh ruled about 250,000 natives under the British protectorate, but he constantly refused to keep the terms of the treaty he had signed. Under Sir Francis Scott, Governor of the Gold Coast, a punitive expedition set out for the capital, Kumasi, but not a shot was fired, and the little town was entered without fighting. King Prempeh was captured and sentenced to banishment. In an earlier war, during which there was much fighting, Kumasi was entered and partly destroyed by British forces.