Tingoi
Tingoi, also recorded as Tingɔi or Njaloi, is the best-known of the Mende nature genii (dyinyinga). She is pictured as a strikingly beautiful woman, sometimes with a fish-like or snake-like lower body, who sits on rocks in rivers combing her long hair before a mirror. Ethnographers of the Mende, notably Harris and Sawyerr and Kenneth Little, record that a person who manages to seize her comb or mirror gains a claim on her: she appears in dreams and offers wealth and success, but demands a costly return, in some accounts the surrender of a relative to her underwater realm. Sylvia Boone has argued that ideals of feminine beauty embodied in the Sande society's imagery draw on the radiance associated with such water spirits. Tingoi remains a living figure of belief and storytelling in southern and eastern Sierra Leone.
Domains
- rivers and water
- wealth and fortune
Powers
- to grant wealth and good fortune to those who seize her comb or mirror, in exchange for a heavy price
- to appear as a beautiful long-haired woman, sometimes with a fish- or snake-like lower body, on rocks in rivers
Relations
- subordinate to: Creator GodLike all the nature genii (dyinyinga), Tingoi stands within the created order under Ngewo, the Mende supreme God, from whom all spiritual power ultimately derives.Anthony J. Gittins, Mende Religion: Aspects of Belief and Thought in Sierra Leone, Steyler Verlag, 1987 (secondary)
Sources
- Tingoi (Njaloi) is the beautiful female water spirit of Mende belief, a mermaid-like genius of rivers who sits on rocks combing her hair and grants wealth, at a price, to those who seize her comb or mirror.: W. T. Harris & Harry Sawyerr, The Springs of Mende Belief and Conduct, Sierra Leone University Press, 1968 (secondary); Kenneth Little, The Mende of Sierra Leone: A West African People in Transition, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951 (secondary); Sylvia Ardyn Boone, Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art, Yale University Press, 1986 (secondary)