I had now been away from England for about a year, and while I cannot say that I felt at home in Dowayoland I seemed to have reached some sort of intermediate stage where most things had a deceptive familiarity. It was time to start tidying up my notes and attack those areas that I had put aside till greater linguistic competence and personal contacts made research more feasible. One area of special importance was the agrarian rites of fertility. These centred partly on the Old Man of Kpan, partly on his relatives I had met over the far side of Dowayoland at those first skull-festivals I had attended. They involve treating the magic stones that ensure plant fertility with special remedies. In Kpan this is collapsed with the rainmaking: the remedies are thought to "repair the earth" by falling with the rain. At the other end of Dowayoland the rituals involve setting a line of stones across each end of the valley as a "barrier against famine". I now began a series of short raids into this area to talk to the holders of these secrets, the "Masters of the Earth".

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