Ritual blinding myth

The king of the Acipu has a hermit-like existence on top of Korisino mountain, living alone apart from his wife and closest advisor. He is not supposed to come down at all from the mountain, and is not supposed to speak Hausa, only Cicipu. Perhaps because of this isolation, certain myths have grown up about him amongst neighbouring tribes.

David Heath, a missionary linguist working with the nearby Dukawa people, reports the belief amongst them that the Acipu king is ritually blinded at the start of his reign, and that this physical blindness is compensated for by a greater awareness in the spiritual world. This was also reported in print in Swank 1977. However the current king certainly seems to be fully-sighted, and the Acipu I spoke to said they had not heard of this story. In 1926 when the anthropologist A. B. Mathews visited, the king was blind, as was the king who died in 1992 (according to CAPRO 1995). For the moment it seems best to accept the word of the Acipu on this matter.