Chapter XV: Part 15

If the expedition has been successful, if the enemy's village has been surprised and stormed, the men and old women butchered, and the young women taken prisoners, the warriors beat a hasty retreat with their booty in order to be safe at home, or at least in the shelter of a friendly village, before nightfall. Their reason for haste is the fear of being overtaken in the darkness by the ghosts of their slaughtered foes, who, powerless by day, are very dangerous and terrible by night. Restlessly through the hours of darkness these unquiet spirits follow like sleuth-hounds in the tracks of their retreating enemies, eager to come up with them and by contact with the bloodstained weapons of their slayers to recover the spiritual substance which they have lost. Not till they have done so can they find rest and peace. That is why the victors are careful not at first to bring back their weapons into the village but to hide them somewhere in the bushes at a safe distance. There they leave them for some days until the baffled ghosts may be supposed to have given up the chase and returned, sad and angry, to their mangled bodies in the charred ruins of their old home. The first night after the return of the warriors is always the most anxious time; all the villagers are then on the alert for fear of the ghosts; but if the night passes quietly, their terror gradually subsides and gives place to the dread of their surviving enemies.[455]

[Sidenote: Seclusion of man-slayers from fear of their victims' ghosts.]

As the victors in a raid are supposed to have more or less of the soul-stuff or spiritual essence of their slain foes adhering to their persons, none of their friends will venture to touch them for some time after their return to the village. Everybody avoids them and goes carefully out of their way. If during this time any of the villagers suffers from a pain in his stomach, he thinks that he must have inadvertently sat down where one of the warriors had sat before him. If somebody endures the pangs of toothache, he makes sure that he must have eaten a fruit which had been touched by one of the slayers. All the refuse of the meals of these gallant men must be most carefully put away lest a pig should devour it; for if it did do so, the animal would certainly die, which would be a serious loss to the owner. Hence when the warriors have satisfied their hunger, any food that remains over is burnt or buried. The fighting men themselves are not very seriously incommoded, or at all events endangered, by the ghosts of their victims; for they have taken the precaution to disinfect themselves by the sap of a certain creeper, which, if it does not render them absolutely immune to ghostly influence, at least fortifies their constitution to a very considerable extent.[456]

[Sidenote: Feigned indignation of a man who has connived at the murder of a relative.]

Sometimes, instead of sending forth a band of warriors to ravage, burn, and slaughter the whole male population of the village in which the wicked sorcerer resides, the people of one village will come to a secret understanding with the people of the sorcerer's village to have the miscreant quietly put out of the way. A hint is given to the scoundrel's next of kin, it may be his brother, son, or nephew, that if he will only wink at the slaughter of his obnoxious relative, he will receive a handsome compensation from the slayers. Should he privately accept the offer, he is most careful to conceal his connivance at the deed of blood, lest he should draw down on his head the wrath of his murdered kinsman's ghost. So, when the deed is done and the murder is out, he works himself up into a state of virtuous sorrow and indignation, covers his head with the leaves of a certain plant, and chanting a dirge in tones of heart-rending grief, marches straight to the village of the murderers. There, on the public square, surrounded by an attentive audience, he opens the floodgates of his eloquence and pours forth the torrent of an aching heart. "You have slain my kinsman," says he, "you are wicked men! How could you kill so good a man, who conferred so many benefits on me in his lifetime? I knew nothing of the plot. Had I had an inkling of it, I would have foiled it. How can I now avenge his death? I have no property with which to hire men of war to go and punish his murderers. Yet in spite of everything my murdered kinsman will not believe in my innocence! He will be angry with me, he will pay me out, he will do me all the harm he can. Therefore do you declare openly whether I had any share whatever in his death, and come and strew lime on my head in order that he may convince himself of my innocence." This appeal of injured innocence meets with a ready response. The people dust the leaves on his head with powdered lime; and so, decorated with the white badge of spotless virtue, and enriched with a boar's tusk or other valuable object as the price of his compliance, he returns to his village with a conscience at peace with all the world, reflecting with satisfaction on the profitable transaction he has just concluded, and laughing in his sleeve at the poor deluded ghost of his murdered relative.[457]

[Sidenote: Comedy acted to deceive the ghost of a murdered kinsman.]

Sometimes the worthy soul who thus for a valuable consideration consents to waive all his personal feelings, will even carry his self-abnegation so far as to be present and look on at the murder of his kinsman. But true to his principles he will see to it that the thing is done decently and humanely. When the struggle is nearly over and the man is down, writhing on the ground with the murderers busy about him, his loving kinsman will not suffer them to take an unfair advantage of their superior numbers to cut him up alive with their knives, to chop him with their axes, or to smash him with their clubs. He will only allow them to stab him with their spears, repeating of course the stabs again and again till the victim ceases to writhe and quiver, and lies there dead as a stone. Then begins the real time of peril for the virtuous kinsman who has been a spectator and director of the scene; for the ghost of the murdered man has now deserted its mangled body, and, still blinded with blood and smarting with pain, might easily and even excusably misunderstand the situation. It is essential, therefore, in order to prevent a painful misapprehension, that the kinsman should at once and emphatically disclaim any part or parcel in the murder. This he accordingly does in language which leaves no room for doubt or ambiguity. He falls into a passion: he rails at the murderers: he proclaims his horror at their deed. All the way home he refuses to be comforted. He upbraids the assassins, he utters the most frightful threats against them; he rushes at them to snatch their weapons from them and dash them in pieces. But they easily wrench the weapons from his unresisting hands. For the whole thing is only a piece of acting. His sole intention is that the ghost may see and hear it all, and being convinced of the innocence of his dear kinsman may not punish him with bad crops, wounds, sickness, and other misfortunes. Even when he has reached the village, he keeps up the comedy for a time, raging, fretting and fuming at the irreparable loss he has sustained by the death of his lamented relative.[458]

[Sidenote: Pretence of avenging the ghost of a murdered sorcerer.]

Similarly when a chief has among his subjects a particular sorcerer whom he fears but with whom he is professedly on terms of friendship, he will sometimes engage a man to murder him. No sooner, however, is the murder perpetrated than the chief who bespoke it hastens in seeming indignation with a band of followers to the murderer's village. The assassin, of course, has got a hint of what is coming, and he and his friends take care not to be at home when the chief arrives on his mission of vengeance. Balked by the absence of their victim the avengers of blood breathe out fire and slaughter, but content themselves in fact with smashing an old pot or two, knocking down a deserted hut, and perhaps felling a banana-tree or a betel-palm. Having thus given the ghost of the murdered man an unequivocal proof of the sincerity of their friendship, they return quietly home.[459]

[Sidenote: The Kai afraid of ghosts.]

The habits of Kai ghosts are to some extent just the contrary of those of living men. They sleep by day and go about their business by night, when they frighten people and play them all kinds of tricks. Usually they appear in the form of animals. As light has the effect of blinding or at least dazzling them, they avoid everything bright, and hence it is easy to scare them away by means of fire. That is why no native will go even a short way in the dark without a bamboo torch. If it is absolutely necessary to go out by night, which he is very loth to do, he will hum and haw loudly before quitting the house so as to give notice to any lurking ghost that he is coming with a light, which allows the ghost to scuttle out of his way in good time. The people of a village live in terror above all so long as a corpse remains unburied in it; after nightfall nobody would then venture out of sight of the houses. When a troop of people go by night to a neighbouring village with flaring torches in their hands, nobody is willing to walk last on the path; they all huddle together for safety in the middle, till one man braver than the rest consents to act as rearguard. The rustling of a bush in the evening twilight startles them with the dread of some ghastly apparition; the sight of a pig in the gloaming is converted by their fears into the vision of a horrible spectre. If a man stumbles, it is because a ghost has pushed him, and he fancies he perceives the frightful thing in a tree-stump or any chance object. No wonder a Kai man fears ghosts, since he believes that the mere touch of one of them may be fatal. People who fall down in fits or in faints are supposed to have been touched by ghosts; and on coming to themselves they will tell their friends with the most solemn assurance how they felt the death-cold hand of the ghost on their body, and how a shudder ran through their whole frame at contact with the uncanny being.[460]

[Sidenote: Services rendered to the living by ghosts of the dead.]

But it would be a mistake to imagine that the ghosts of the dead are a source of danger, annoyance, and discomfort, and nothing more. That is not so. They may and do render the Kai the most material services in everyday life, particularly by promoting the supply of food both vegetable and animal. I have said that these practical savages stand towards their departed kinsfolk on a strictly commercial footing; and I will now illustrate the benefits which the Kai hope to receive from the ghosts in return for all the respect and attention lavished on them. In the first place, then, so long as a ghost remains in the neighbourhood of the village, it is expected of him that he shall make the crops thrive and neither tread them down himself nor allow wild pigs to do so. The expectation is reasonable, yet the conduct of the ghost does not always answer to it. Occasionally, whether out of sheer perverseness or simple absence of mind, he will sit down in a field; and wherever he does so, he makes a hollow where the fruits will not grow. Indeed any fruit that he even touches with his foot in passing, shrivels up. Where these things have happened, the people offer boiled taro and a few crabs to the ghosts to induce them to keep clear of the crops and to repose their weary limbs elsewhere than in the tilled fields.[461]

[Sidenote: Ghosts help Kai hunters to kill game.]

But the most important service which the dead render to the living is the good luck which they vouchsafe to hunters. Hence in order to assure himself of the favour of the dead the hunter hangs his nets on a grave before he uses them. If a man was a good and successful hunter in his lifetime, his ghost will naturally be more than usually able to assist his brethren in the craft after his death. For that reason when such a man has just died, the people, to adopt a familiar proverb, hasten to make hay while the sun shines by hunting very frequently, in the confident expectation of receiving ghostly help from the deceased hunter. In the evening, when they return from the chase, they lay a small portion of their bag near his grave, scatter a powder which possesses the special virtue of attracting ghosts, and call out, "So-and-so, come and eat; here I set down food for you, it is a part of all we have." If after such an offering and invocation the night wind rustles the tops of the trees or shakes the thatch of leaves on the roofs, they know that the ghost is in the village. The twinkle of a glow-worm near his grave is the glitter of his eye. In the morning, too, before they sally forth to the woods, one of the next of kin to the dead huntsman will go betimes to his grave, stamp on it to waken the sleeper below, and call out, "So-and-so, come! we are now about to go out hunting. Help us to a good bag!" If they have luck, they praise the deceased as a good spirit and in the evening supply his wants again with food, tobacco, and betel. The sacrifice, as usually happens in such cases, does not call for any great exercise of self-denial; since the spirit consumes only the spiritual essence of the good things, while he leaves their material substance to be enjoyed by the living.[462]

[Sidenote: Ill-treatment of a ghost who fails to help hunters.]

However, it sometimes happens that the ghost disappoints them, and that the hunters return in the evening hungry and empty-handed. This may even be repeated day after day, and still the people will not lose hope. They think that the ghost is perhaps busy working in his field, or that he has gone on a visit and will soon come home. To give him time to do his business or see his friends at leisure, they will remain in the village for several days. Then, when they imagine that he must surely have returned, they go out into the woods and try their luck again. But should there still be no ghost and no game, they begin to be seriously alarmed. They think that some evil must have befallen him. But if time goes on and still he gives no sign and the game continues scarce and shy, their feelings towards the ghost undergo a radical alteration. Passion getting the better of prudence, they will even reproach him with ingratitude, taunt him with his uselessness, and leave him to starve. Should he after that still remain deaf to their railing and regardless of the short commons to which they have reduced him, they will discharge a volley of abuse at his grave and trouble themselves about him no more. However, if, not content with refusing his valuable assistance in the chase, the ghost should actually blight the crops or send wild boars into the fields to trample them down, the patience of the long-suffering people is quite exhausted: the vials of their wrath overflow; and snatching up their cudgels in a fury they belabour his grave till his bones ache, or even drive him with blows and curses altogether from the village.[463]

[Sidenote: The journey of ghosts to the spirit land.]

Such an outcast ghost, if he does not seek his revenge by prowling in the neighbourhood and preying on society at large, will naturally bethink himself of repairing to his long home in the under world. For sooner or later the spirits of the dead congregate there. It is especially when the flesh has quite mouldered away from his bones that the ghost packs up his little traps and sets out for the better land. The entrance to the abode of bliss is a cave to the west of Saddle Mountain. Here in the gully there is a projecting tree-stump on which the ghosts perch waiting for a favourable moment to jump into the mouth of the cavern. When a slight earthquake is felt, a Kai man will often say, "A ghost has just leaped from the tree into the cave; that is why the earth is shaking." Down below the ghosts are received by Tulmeng, lord of the nether world. Often he appears in a canoe to ferry them over to the further shore. "Blood or wax?" is the laconic question which he puts to the ghost on the bank. He means to say, "Were you killed or were you done to death by magic?" For it is with wax that the sorcerer stops up the fatal little tubes in which he encloses the souls of his enemies. And the reason why the lord of the dead puts the question to the newcomer is that the ghosts of the slain and the ghosts of the bewitched dwell in separate places. Right in front of the land of souls rises a high steep wall, which cannot be climbed even by ghosts. The spirits have accordingly to make their way through it and thereupon find themselves in their new abode. According to some Kai, before the ghosts are admitted to ghost land they must swing to and fro on a rope and then drop into water, where they are washed clean of bloodstains and all impurity; after which they ascend, spick and span, the last slope to the village of ghosts.

[Sidenote: Life of ghosts in the other world.]

Tulmeng has the reputation of being a very stern ruler in his weird realm, but the Kai really know very little about him. He beats refractory souls, and it is essential that every ghost should have his ears and nose bored. The operation is very painful, and to escape it most people take the precaution of having their ears and noses bored in their lifetime. Life in the other world goes on just like life in this one. Houses are built exactly like houses on earth, and there as here pigs swarm in the streets. Fields are tilled and crops are got in; ghostly men marry ghostly women, who give birth to ghostly children. The same old round of love and hate, of quarrelling and fighting, of battle, murder and sudden death goes on in the shadowy realm below ground just as in the more solid world above ground. Sorcerers are there also, and they breed just as bad blood among the dead as among the living. All things indeed are the same except for their shadowy unsubstantial texture.[464]

[Sidenote: Ghosts die and turn into animals.]

But the ghosts do not live for ever in the nether world. They die the second death and turn into animals, generally into cuscuses. In the shape of animals they haunt the wildest, deepest, darkest glens of the rugged mountains. No one but the owner has the right to set foot on such haunted ground. He may even kill the ghostly animals. Any one else who dared to disturb them in their haunts would do so at the peril of his life. But even the owner of the land who has killed one of the ghostly creatures is bound to appease the spirit of the dead beast. He may not cut up the carcase at once, but must leave it for a time, perhaps for a whole night, after laying on it presents which are intended to mollify and soothe the injured spirit. In placing the gifts on the body he says, "Take the gifts and leave us that which was a game animal, that we may eat it." When the animal's ghost has appropriated the spiritual essence of the offerings, the hunter and his family may eat the carcase. Should one of these ghostly creatures die or be killed, its spirit turns either into an insect or into an ant-hill. Children who would destroy such an ant-hill or throw little darts at it, are warned by their elders not to indulge in such sacrilegious sport. When the insect also dies, the series of spiritual transformations is at an end.[465]

[Sidenote: Ghosts of persons eminent for good or evil in their lives are remembered and appealed to for help long after their deaths. Prayers to ghosts for rain, a good crop of yams, and so forth.]

The ghosts whose help is invoked by hunters and farmers are commonly the spirits of persons who have lately died, since such spirits linger for a time in the neighbourhood, or rather in the memory of the people. But besides these spirits of the recent dead there are certain older ghosts who may be regarded as permanent patrons of hunting and other departments of life and nature, because their fame has survived long after the men or women themselves were gathered to their fathers. For example, men who were bold and resolute in battle during their life will be invoked long after their death, whenever a stout heart is needed for some feat of daring. And men who were notorious thieves and villains in the flesh will be invited, long after their bodies have mouldered in the grave, to lend their help when a deed of villainy is to be done. The names of men or women who were eminent for good or evil in their lives survive indefinitely in the memory of the tribe. Thus before a battle many a Kai warrior will throw something over the enemy's village and as he does so he will softly call on two ghosts, "We and Gunang, ye two heroes, come and guard me and keep the foes from me, that they may not be able to hurt me! But stand by me that I may be able to riddle them with spears!" Again, when a magician wishes to cause an earthquake, he will take a handful of ashes, wrap them in certain leaves, and pronounce the following spell over the packet: "Thou man Sâiong, throw about everything that exists; houses, villages, paths, fields, bushes and tall forest trees, yams, and taro, throw them all hither and thither; break and smash everything, but leave me in peace!" While he utters this incantation or prayer, the sorcerer's body itself twitches and quivers more and more violently, till the hut creaks and cracks and his strength is exhausted. Then he throws the packet of ashes out of the hut, and after that the earthquake is sure to follow sooner or later. So when they want rain, the Kai call upon two ghostly men named Balong and Batu, or Dinding and Bojang, to drive away a certain woman named Yondimi, so that the rain which she is holding up may fall upon the earth. The prayer for rain addressed to the ghosts is combined with a magical spell pronounced over a stone. And when rain has fallen in abundance and the Kai wish to make it cease, they strew hot ashes on the stone or lay it in a wood fire. On the principle of homoeopathic magic the heat of the ashes or of the fire is supposed to dry up the rain. Thus in these ceremonies for the production or cessation of rain we see that religion, represented by the invocation of the ghosts, goes hand in hand with magic, represented by the hocus-pocus with the stone. Again, certain celebrated ghosts are invoked to promote the growth of taro and yams. Thus to ensure a good crop of taro, the suppliant will hold a bud of taro in his hand and pray, "O Mrs. Zewanong, may my taro leaves unfold till they are as broad as the petticoat which covers thy loins!" When they are planting yams, they pray to two women named Tendung and Molewa that they would cause the yams to put forth as long suckers as the strings which the women twist to make into carrying-nets. Before they dig up the yams, they take a branch and drive with it the evil spirits or ghosts from the house in which the yams are to be stored. Having effected this clearance they stick the branch in the roof of the house and appoint a certain ghostly man named Ehang to act as warden. Again, fowlers invoke a married pair of ghosts called Mânze and Tâmingoka to frighten the birds from the trees and drive them on the limed twigs. Or they pray to a ghostly woman named Lâne, saying, "In all places of the neighbourhood shake the betel-nuts from the palms, that they may fall down to me on this fruit-tree and knock the berries from the boughs!" But by the betel-nuts the fowler in veiled language means the birds, which are to come in flocks to the fruit-tree and be caught fast by the lime on the branches. Again, when a fisherman wishes to catch eels, he prays to two ghosts called Yambi and Ngigwâli, saying: "Come, ye two men, and go down into the holes of the pool; smite the eels in them, and draw them out on the bank, that I may kill them!" Once more, when a child suffers from enlarged spleen, which shews as a swelling on its body, the parent will pray to a ghost named Aidolo for help in these words: "Come and help this child! It is big with a ball of sickness. Cut it up and squeeze and squash it, that the blood and pus may drain away and my child may be made whole!" To give point to the prayer the petitioner simultaneously pretends to cut a cross on the swelling with a knife.[466]

[Sidenote: Possible development of departmental gods out of ghosts.]

From this it appears that men and women who impressed their contemporaries by their talents, their virtues, or their vices in their lifetime, are sometimes remembered long after their death and continue to be invoked by their descendants for help in the particular department in which they had formerly rendered themselves eminent either for good or for evil. Such powerful and admired or dreaded ghosts might easily grow in time into gods and goddesses, who are worshipped as presiding over the various departments of nature and of human life. There is good reason to think that among many tribes and nations of the world the history of a god, if it could be recovered, would be found to be the history of a spirit who served his apprenticeship as a ghost before he was promoted to the rank of deity.

[Sidenote: Kai lads at circumcision supposed to be swallowed by a monster. Bull-roarers.]

Before quitting the Kai tribe I will mention that they, like the other tribes on this coast, practise circumcision and appear to associate the custom more or less vaguely with the spirits of the dead. Like their neighbours, they impress women with the belief that at circumcision the lads are swallowed by a monster, who can only be induced to disgorge them by the bribe of much food and especially of pigs, which are accordingly bred and kept nominally for this purpose, but really to furnish a banquet for the men alone. The ceremony is performed at irregular intervals of several years. A long hut, entered through a high door at one end and tapering away at the other, is built in a lonely part of the forest. It represents the monster which is to swallow the novices in its capacious jaws. The process of deglutition is represented as follows. In front of the entrance to the hut a scaffold is erected and a man mounts it. The novices are then led up one by one and passed under the scaffold. As each comes up, the man overhead makes a gesture of swallowing, while at the same time he takes a great gulp of water from a coco-nut flask. The trembling novice is now supposed to be in the maw of the monster; but a pig is offered for his redemption, the man on the scaffold, as representative of the beast, accepts the offering, a gurgling sound is heard, and the water which he had just gulped descends in a jet on the novice, who now goes free. The actual circumcision follows immediately on this impressive pantomime. The monster who swallows the lads is named Ngosa, which means "Grandfather"; and the same name is given to the bull-roarers which are swung at the festival. The Kai bull-roarer is a lance-shaped piece of palm-wood, more or less elaborately carved, which being swung at the end of a string emits the usual droning, booming sound. When they are not in use, the instruments are kept, carefully wrapt up, in the men's house, which no woman may enter. Only the old men have the right to undo these precious bundles and take out the sacred bull-roarers. Women, too, are strictly excluded from the neighbourhood of the circumcision ground; any who intrude on it are put to death. The mythical monster who is supposed to haunt the ground is said to be very dangerous to the female sex. When the novices go forth to be swallowed by him in the forest, the women who remain in the village weep and wail; and they rejoice greatly when the lads come back safe and sound.[467]

[Sidenote: The Tami Islanders of Huon Gulf.]

The last tribe of German New Guinea to which I shall invite your attention are the Tami. Most of them live not on the mainland but in a group of islands in Huon Gulf, to the south-east of Yabim. They are of a purer Melanesian stock than most of the tribes on the neighbouring coast of New Guinea. The German missionary Mr. G. Bamler, who lived amongst them for ten years and knows the people and their language intimately, thinks that they may even contain a strong infusion of Polynesian blood.[468] They are a seafaring folk, who extend their voyages all along the coast for the purpose of trade, bartering mats, pearls, fish, coco-nuts, and other tree-fruits which grow on their islands for taro, bananas, sugar-cane, and sago, which grow on the mainland.[469]

[Sidenote: The long soul and the short soul.]

In the opinion of these people every man has two souls, a long one and a short one. The long soul is identified with the shadow. It is only loosely attached to its owner, wandering away from his body in sleep and returning to it when he wakes with a start. The seat of the long soul is in the stomach. When the man dies, the long soul quits his body and appears to his relations at a distance, who thus obtain the first intimation of his decease. Having conveyed the sad intelligence to them, the long soul departs by way of Maligep, on the west coast of New Britain, to a village on the north coast, the inhabitants of which recognise the Tami ghosts as they flit past.[470]

[Sidenote: Departure of the short soul to Lamboam, the nether world.]

The short soul, on the other hand, never leaves the body in life but only after death. Even then it tarries for a time in the neighbourhood of the body before it takes its departure for Lamboam, which is the abode of the dead in the nether world. The Tami bury their dead in shallow graves under or near the houses. They collect in a coco-nut shell the maggots which swarm from the decaying corpse; and when the insects cease to swarm, they know that the short soul has gone away to its long home. It is the short soul which receives and carries away with it the offerings that are made to the deceased. These offerings serve a double purpose; they form the nucleus of the dead man's property in the far country, and they ensure him a friendly reception on his arrival. For example, the soul shivers with cold, when it first reaches the subterranean realm, and the other ghosts, the old stagers, obligingly heat stones to warm it up.[471]

[Sidenote: Dilemma of the Tami.]

However, the restless spirit returns from time to time to haunt and terrify the sorcerer, who was the cause of its death. But its threats are idle; it can really do him very little harm. Yet it keeps its ghostly eye on its surviving relatives to see that they do not stand on a friendly footing with the wicked sorcerer. Strictly speaking the Tami ought to avenge his death, but as a matter of fact they do not. The truth of it is that the Tami do a very good business with the people on the mainland, among whom the sorcerer is usually to be found; and the amicable relations which are essential to the maintenance of commerce would unquestionably suffer if a merchant were to indulge his resentment so far as to take his customer's head instead of his sago and bananas. These considerations reduce the Tami to a painful dilemma. If they gratify the ghost they lose a customer; if they keep the customer they must bitterly offend the ghost, who will punish them for their disrespect to his memory. In this delicate position the Tami endeavour to make the best of both worlds. On the one hand, by loudly professing their wrath and indignation against the guilty sorcerer they endeavour to appease the ghost; and on the other hand, by leaving the villain unmolested they do nothing to alienate their customers.[472]

[Sidenote: Funeral and mourning customs of the Tami.]

But if they do not gratify the desire for vengeance of the blood-thirsty ghost, they are at great pains to testify their respect for him in all other ways. The whole village takes part in the mourning and lamentation for a death. The women dance death dances, the men lend a hand in the preparations for the burial. All festivities are stopped: the drums are silent. As the people believe that when anybody has died, the ghosts of his dead kinsfolk gather in the village and are joined by other ghosts, they are careful not to leave the mourners alone, exposed to the too pressing attentions of the spectral visitors; they keep the bereaved family company, especially at night; indeed, if the weather be fine, the whole population of the village will encamp round the temporary hut which is built on the grave. This watch at the grave lasts about eight days. The watchers are supported and comforted in the discharge of their pious duty by a liberal allowance of food and drink. Nor are the wants of the ghost himself forgotten. Many families offer him taro broth at this time. The period of mourning lasts two or three years. During the first year the observances prescribed by custom are strictly followed, and the nearest relations must avoid publicity. After a year they are allowed more freedom; for example, the widow may lay aside the heavy net, which is her costume in full mourning, and may replace it by a lighter one; moreover, she may quit the house. At the end of the long period of mourning, dances are danced in honour of the deceased. They begin in the evening and last all night till daybreak. The mourners on these occasions smear their heads, necks, and breasts with black earth. A great quantity of food, particularly of pigs and taro broth, has been made ready; for the whole village, and perhaps a neighbouring village also, has been invited to share in the festivity, which may last eight or ten days, if the provisions suffice. The dances begin with a gravity and solemnity appropriate to a memorial of the dead; but towards the close the performers indulge in a lighter vein and act comic pieces, which so tickle the fancy of the spectators, that many of them roll on the ground with laughter. Finally, the temporary hut erected on the grave is taken down and the materials burned. As the other ghosts of the village are believed to be present in attendance on the one who is the guest of honour, all the villagers bring offerings and throw them into the fire. However, persons who are not related to the ghosts may snatch the offerings from the flames and convert them to their own use. Precious objects, such as boars' tusks and dogs' teeth, are not committed to the fire but merely swung over it in a bag, while the name of the person who offers the valuables in this economical fashion is proclaimed aloud for the satisfaction of the ghost. With these dances, pantomimes, and offerings the living have discharged the last duties of respect and affection to the dead. Yet for a while his ghost is thought to linger as a domestic or household spirit; but the time comes when he is wholly forgotten.[473]

[Sidenote: Bones of the dead dug up and kept in the house for a time.]

Many families, however, not content with the observance of these ordinary ceremonies, dig up the bodies of their dead when the flesh has mouldered away, redden the bones with ochre, and keep them bundled up in the house for two or three years, when these relics of mortality are finally committed to the earth. The intention of thus preserving the bones for years in the house is not mentioned, but no doubt it is to maintain a closer intimacy with the departed spirit than seems possible if his skeleton is left to rot in the grave. When he is at last laid in the ground, the tomb is enclosed by a strong wooden fence and planted with ornamental shrubs. Yet in the course of years, as the memory of the deceased fades away, his grave is neglected, the fence decays, the shrubs run wild; another generation, which knew him not, will build a house on the spot, and if in digging the foundations they turn up his bleached and mouldering bones, it is nothing to them: why should they trouble themselves about the spirit of a man or woman whose very name is forgotten?[474]

[Footnote 450: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ pp. 142 _sq._]

[Footnote 451: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ p. 143.]

[Footnote 452: Ch. Keysser, _l.c._]

[Footnote 453: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ pp. 143 _sq._]

[Footnote 454: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ pp. 62 _sq._]

[Footnote 455: Ch. Keysser, pp. 64 _sqq._, 147 _sq._]

[Footnote 456: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ p. 132.]

[Footnote 457: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ p. 148.]

[Footnote 458: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ pp. 148 _sq._]

[Footnote 459: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ p. 149.]

[Footnote 460: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ p. 147.]

[Footnote 461: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ p. 145.]

[Footnote 462: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ p. 145.]

[Footnote 463: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ pp. 145 _sq._]

[Footnote 464: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ pp. 149 _sq._]

[Footnote 465: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ pp. 112, 150 _sq._]

[Footnote 466: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ pp. 151-154. In this passage the ghosts are spoken of simply as spirits (_Geister_); but the context proves that the spirits in question are those of the dead.]

[Footnote 467: Ch. Keysser, _op. cit._ pp. 34-40.]

[Footnote 468: G. Bamler, "Tami," in R. Neuhauss's _Deutsch Neu-Guinea_, iii. (Berlin, 1911) p. 489; compare _ib._ p. vii.]

[Footnote 469: H. Zahn, "Die Jabim," in R. Neuhauss's _Deutsch Neu-Guinea_, iii. 315 _sq._]

[Footnote 470: G. Bamler, _op. cit._ p. 518.]

[Footnote 471: G. Bamler, _l.c._]

[Footnote 472: G. Bamler, _op. cit._ pp. 518 _sq._]

[Footnote 473: G. Bamler, _op. cit._ pp. 519-522.]

[Footnote 474: G. Bamler, _op. cit._ p. 518.]

LECTURE XIV

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF GERMAN AND DUTCH NEW GUINEA

[Sidenote: The Tami doctrine of souls and gods. The Tago spirits, represented by masked men.]

At the close of the last lecture I dealt with the Tami, a people of Melanesian stock who inhabit a group of islands off the mainland of New Guinea. I explained their theory of the human soul. According to them, every man has two distinct souls, a long one and a short one, both of which survive his death, but depart in different directions, one of them repairing to the lower world, and the other being last sighted off the coast of New Britain. But the knowledge which these savages possess of the spiritual world is not limited to the souls of men; they are acquainted with several deities (_buwun_), who live in the otherwise uninhabited island of Djan. They are beings of an amorous disposition, and though their real shape is that of a fish's body with a human head, they can take on the form of men in order to seduce women. They also cause epidemics and earthquakes; yet the people shew them no respect, for they believe them to be dull-witted as well as lecherous. At most, if a fearful epidemic is raging, they will offer the gods a lean little pig or a mangy cur; and should an earthquake last longer than usual they will rap on the ground, saying, "Hullo, you down there! easy a little! We men are still here." They also profess acquaintance with a god named Anuto, who created the heaven and the earth together with the first man and woman. He is a good being; nobody need be afraid of him. At festivals and meat markets the Tami offer him the first portion in a little basket, which a lad carries away into the wood and leaves there. As usual, the deity consumes only the soul of the offering; the bearer eats the material substance.[475] The Tami further believe in certain spirits called Tago which are very old, having been created at the same time as the village. Every family or clan possesses its own familiar spirits of this class. They are represented by men who disguise their bodies in dense masses of sago leaves and their faces in grotesque masks with long hooked noses. In this costume the maskers jig it as well as the heavy unwieldy disguise allows them to do. But the dance consists in little more than running round and round in a circle, with an occasional hop; the orchestra stands in the middle, singing and thumping drums. Sometimes two or three of the masked men will make a round of the village, pelting the men with pebbles or hard fruits, while the women and children scurry out of their way. When they are not in use the masks are hidden away in a hut in the forest, which women and children may not approach. Their secret is sternly kept: any betrayal of it is punished with death. The season for the exhibition of these masked dances recurs only once in ten or twelve years, but it extends over a year or thereabout. During the whole of the dancing-season, curiously enough, coco-nuts are strictly tabooed; no person may eat them, so that the unused nuts accumulate in thousands. As coco-nuts ordinarily form a daily article of diet with the Tami, their prohibition for a year is felt by the people as a privation. The meaning of the prohibition and also of the masquerades remains obscure.[476]

[Sidenote: The superhuman beings with whom the Tami are chiefly concerned are the souls of the dead. Offerings to the dead.]

But while the Tami believe in gods and spirits of various sorts, the superhuman beings with whom they chiefly concern themselves are the souls of the dead. On this subject Mr. Bamler writes: "All the spirits whom we have thus far described are of little importance in the life and thought of the Tami; they are remembered only on special occasions. The spirits who fill the thoughts and attract the attention of the Tami are the _kani_, that is, the souls of the departed. The Tami therefore practise the worship of ancestors. Yet the memory of ancestors does not reach far back; people occupy themselves only with the souls of those relatives whom they have personally known. Hence the worship seldom extends beyond the grandfather, even when a knowledge of more remote progenitors survives. An offering to the ancestors takes the form of a little dish of boiled taro, a cigar, betel-nuts, and the like; but the spirits partake only of the image or soul of the things offered, while the material substance falls to the share of mankind. There is no fixed rule as to the manner or time of the offering. It is left to the caprice or childlike affection of the individual to decide how he will make it. With most natives it is a simple matter of business, the throwing of a sprat to catch a salmon; the man brings his offering only when he needs the help of the spirits. There is very little ceremony about it. The offerer will say, for example, 'There, I lay a cigar for you; smoke it and hereafter drive fish towards me'; or, 'Accompany me on the journey, and see to it that I do good business.' The place where the food is presented is the shelf for pots and dishes under the roof. Thus they imagine that the spirits exert a tolerably far-reaching influence over all created things, and it is their notion that the spirits take possession of the objects. In like manner the spirits can injure a man by thwarting his plans, for example, by frightening away the fish, blighting the fruits of the fields, and so forth. If the native is forced to conclude that the spirits are against him, he has no hesitation about deceiving them in the grossest manner. Should the requisite sacrifices be inconvenient to him, he flatly refuses them, or gives the shabbiest things he can find. In all this the native displays the same craft and cunning which he is apt to practise in his dealings with the whites. He fears the power which the spirit has over him, yet he tries whether he cannot outwit the spirit like an arrant block-head."[477]

[Sidenote: Crude motives for sacrifice.]

This account of the crude but quite intelligible motives which lead these savages to sacrifice to the spirits of their dead may be commended to the attention of writers on the history of religion who read into primitive sacrifice certain subtle and complex ideas which it never entered into the mind of primitive man to conceive and which, even if they were explained to him, he would in all probability be totally unable to understand.

[Sidenote: Lamboam, the land of the dead.]

According to the Tami, the souls of the dead live in the nether world. The spirit-land is called Lamboam; the entrance to it is by a cleft in a rock. The natives of the mainland also call Hades by the name of Lamboam; but whereas according to them every village has its own little Lamboam, the Tami hold that there is only one big Lamboam for everybody, though it is subdivided into many mansions, of which every village has one to itself. In Lamboam everything is fairer and more perfect than on earth. The fruits are so plentiful that the blessed spirits can, if they choose, give themselves up to the delights of idleness; the villages are full of ornamental plants. Yet on the other hand we are informed that life beneath the ground is very like life above it: people work and marry, they squabble and wrangle, they fall sick and even die, just as people do on earth. Souls which die the second death in Lamboam are changed into vermin, such as ants and worms; however, others say that they turn into wood-spirits, who do men a mischief in the fields. It is not so easy as is commonly supposed to effect an entrance into the spirit-land. You must pass a river, and even when you have crossed it you will be very likely to suffer from the practical jokes which the merry old ghosts play on a raw newcomer. A very favourite trick of theirs is to send him up a pandanus tree to look for fruit. If he is simple enough to comply, they catch him by the legs as he is swarming up the trunk and drag him down, so that his whole body is fearfully scratched, if not quite ripped up, by the rough bark. That is why people put valuable things with the dead in the grave, in order that their ghosts on arrival in Lamboam may have the wherewithal to purchase the good graces of the facetious old stagers.[478]

[Sidenote: Return of the ghosts to earth, sometimes in the form of serpents.]

However, even when the ghosts have succeeded in effecting a lodgment in Lamboam, they are not strictly confined to it. They can break bounds at any moment and return to the upper air. This they do particularly when any of their surviving relations is at the point of death. Ghosts of deceased kinsfolk and of others gather round the parting soul and attend it to the far country. Yet sometimes, apparently, the soul sets out alone, for the anxious relatives will call out to it, "Miss not the way." But ghosts visit their surviving friends at other times than at the moment of death. For example, some families possess the power of calling up spirits in the form of serpents from the vasty deep. The spirits whom they evoke are usually those of persons who have died quite lately; for such ghosts cannot return to earth except in the guise of serpents. In this novel shape they naturally feel shy and hide under a mat. They come out only in the dusk of the evening or the darkness of night and sit on the shelf for pots and dishes under the roof. They have lost the faculty of speech and can express themselves only in whistles. These whistles the seer, who is generally a woman, understands perfectly and interprets to his or her less gifted fellows. In this way a considerable body of information, more or less accurate in detail, is collected as to life in the other world. More than that, it is even possible for men, and especially for women, to go down alive into the nether world and prosecute their enquiries at first hand among the ghosts. Women who possess this remarkable faculty transmit it to their daughters, so that the profession is hereditary. When anybody wishes to ascertain how it fares with one of his dead kinsfolk in Lamboam, he has nothing to do but to engage the services of one of these professional mediums, giving her something which belonged to his departed friend. The medium rubs her forehead with ginger, muttering an incantation, lies down on the dead man's property, and falls asleep. Her soul then goes down in a dream to deadland and elicits from the ghosts the required information, which on waking from sleep she imparts to the anxious enquirer.[479]

[Sidenote: Sickness caused by a spirit.]

Sickness accompanied by fainting fits is ascribed to the action of a spirit, it may be the ghost of a near relation, who has carried off the "long soul" of the sufferer. The truant soul is recalled by a blast blown on a triton-shell, in which some chewed ginger or _massoi_ bark has been inserted. The booming sound attracts the attention of the vagrant spirit, while the smell of the bark or of the ginger drives away the ghost.[480]

[Sidenote: Tami lads supposed to be swallowed by a monster at circumcision; the monster and the bull-roarer are both called _kani_.]