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AGGREY BEADS

Aggry, aggri

(Oxford English Dictionary) word of unknown origin and meaning applied to coloured and variegated glass beads of ancient manufacture found buried in the ground in Africa

• Bowdich, T. E., Mission From Cape Coast to Ashantee 1819 
  • Some wore necklaces reaching to the navel entirely of aggry beads.
    
    A band of gold and beads encircled the knee, from which several strings of the same depended.
    
    King . . .  wore a fillet of aggry beads around his temple, necklace of gold cockspur shells strung by their largest ends, over his right shoulder a silk cord, suspending 3 saphies cased in gold; his bracelets were the richest mixture of beads and gold and his fingers covered with rings . . . his knee bands were of aggry beads, his ancle strings of gold ornaments of the most delicate workmanship, small drums, sankos, stools, swords, guns and birds, clustered together. . .
    
    When any one denies a theft, an aggry bead is placed in a small vessel, with some water, the person holding it puts his right foot against the right foot of the accused who invokes the power of the bead to kill if he is guilty, and then takes it into his mouth with a Iittle of the water, the rest being thrown on the ground, and crossed as he repeats the invocation. Their superstition is generally superior to their resolution.
    
    The aggry beads are found in Dankara, Akim, Warsaw, Ahanta, Fantee, the greater number in the former being richer in gold. They are directed to dig for them by a spiral vapour issuing from the ground and that they rarely lie near the surface. The finder is sure of a series of good fortunes. The plain aggry beads are blue, yellow, green or a dull red. The variegated consist of every colour or shade.
    
    Dr. Leyden writes: the aigris is a stone of a greenish blue colour, supposed to be a species of jasper, small perforated pieces of which, valued at their weight in gold, are used for money. (Bowditch had never heard of this.) - Bowdich says this rather describes the popo beads, not the aggry.
    
    Isert writes: they are a sort of coral with inlaid work: the art of making beads is entirely lost in these parts.
    
    The colouring matter of the blue beads has been proved to be iron, that of the yellow lead and antimony with a trifling quantity of copper. The generality of these beads appears to be produced from clays coloured in thin layers, afterwards twisted together in a spiral form and then cut across, also of different coloured clays raked together without blending. How the flowers and delicate patterns in the body and on the surface of the rarer beads have been produced cannot be so well explained.
    
    Aggry is the generic, not the abstract name, awynnee is bead but aggry is an exotic word no native can explain.

   

• Astley, Thomas, A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol II, London, 1745
  • Some wear their hair very long, curled and plaited together, or tied up to the crown; others adjust it in small curls, smeered with palm-oil and a sort of dye, which they order in the form of a rose, or crown; decking it with gold toys and a kind of coral called on the coast Conta de Terra, which they sometimes value three times beyond the finest gold. They use also for ornament a sort of blue coral, called by the Europeans Agriee (note: Aygris stone, mentioned before) and by the blacks Akkerri, which is brought from Bernin, and when of any bigness is prized equal with gold, and sold for weight.
    
    Their necks, arms and legs they adorn with strings of the finest sorts of Venice Bugle, intermixed with gold and the Conta de Terra, or Agrie coral aforementioned. They wear them so thick about their waist, that their nakedness would be sufficiently covered thereby, if they wore no clothes, and the rather, because they always have a garter or girdle. Some of these chains or strings are worth above an hundred pound.
    
    Villault says they wear necklaces and bracelets of beads, beautified with small works of gold, in honour of their fetish and consecrated with certain prayers. They wear strings or jewels on the small of their legs, or else a string of coral, or the bark of the tree sacred to their fetish.

Imports included the aggrey beads of parti-coloured stone ('coral') from Cameroons

blue beads called coris from Benin (blue, green and black stones)

Contrebrode is a sort of glass beads of different sizes made at Venice and so called for their being striped with different colours on a white or black ground. The Negroes use them to tie about their childrens waist till they arrive at a certain age.

Coral and beads serve them for bracelets, necklaces and other ornaments and are in constant demand.