Nuer Curses and Ghostly Vengeance

In this short article I present some of my notes on what may broadly be called Nuer religion. It describes two important concepts of the Nuer of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan: biit , a curse, and cien , the vengeance of a ghost. The curse of certain persons in Nuer society is believed to be effective if they have been wronged. If they utter curses without due cause ( cuong ) the curses will not harm those against whom they are uttered, but will either be ineffective or harm the speakers of them. A man curses another by uttering an invocation ( lam )— which in this context is an imprecation—over, or about, him; and the Nuer distinguish different kinds of curse by reference to the relationship of the persons implicated in it— biit gwan , the curse of a father, biit nara , the curse of a maternal uncle, biit kuaara , the curse of a leopard-skin chief, and so forth. Some of these curses are regarded as weightier than others.