{194}
According to the legend of Osiris as preserved for us by Plutarch,
the slain divinity accompanied with Isis, his sister-wife, after his
death, with the result that she had by him a child whose name is given
in Greek form as Harpocrates.[194.1] Doubt has been thrown by some
Egyptologists upon the accuracy of Plutarch’s report; but it is
probably correct. At all events the incident is fairly widespread both
in tale and superstition, as I shall proceed to show.
Among the Chinese the dead of both sexes have always been held capable
of sexual intercourse with the living. A favourite topic of Chinese
tales is that of a belated wanderer entertained by a liberal host or
hostess and passing the time in agreeable conversation, eating,
drinking, sleeping and sexual intercourse, and then suddenly awaking
to find himself or herself, as the case may be, in or on a tomb, with
no trace of human dwelling near. Visits are paid by the dead to the
living for various purposes, from which the enjoyment of the pleasures
of married life are not excluded. One famous story concerns a man of
the Ma clan, who died childless, leaving a wife who refused to marry
again. In her sorrow she {195} caused to be made a clay image of the
deceased and offered something to it whenever she took a meal, as she
had done to her husband in his lifetime. One night the image became
animated, and telling her that he was her husband permitted to return
and solace her fidelity and chastity, he passed the night with her,
rising at cockcrow and going away. The visit was repeated every night,
with the result that before the end of a month she had conceived and
in due time bore a son. Information was laid before the magistrate and
the woman was arrested. On hearing her story the magistrate said: “I
have heard that the children of ghosts are shadowless, and that those
that have shadows are not genuine.” He took the child into the
sunshine, and lo, its shadow was as faint as a light smoke. He further
tested it by pricking its finger and putting the blood on the clay
image of the woman’s husband, into which it soaked without leaving a
trace, whereas smeared on another image it was wiped off at once.
These experiments convinced the magistrate that the woman’s tale was
true; and all traces of suspicion subsequently vanished when, as the
boy grew up, he was found closely to resemble the deceased in face,
gesture and speech.[195.1]
Gansám, a divinity worshipped by the Muásís and Gonds of Bengal, is
said to have been a Gond chief who was devoured by a tiger just after
his marriage at an early age. “Cut off at such a moment, it was
unreasonable to suppose that his spirit would rest. One year after his
death he visited his wife, and she conceived by him; and the
descendants of the ghostly embrace are, it is said, living to this day
at Amodah in the Central Provinces.” As a result of other apparitions
to many of his old friends he persuaded them to inaugurate a regular
worship of {196} him, and two festivals in the year were established
in his honour.[196.1] Not in all cases, however, do the deceased
husband’s visits to his widow result in the birth of a child. The
legend of Záhir Pir, the saint of a Mohammedanized caste of
scavengers about Benares, relates that he was involved in strife with
his mother’s sister’s sons, who disputed his succession to his
father’s kingdom, and slew them. For this he was cursed by his mother
never to see her face again. In his anguish he called upon Mother
Earth to receive him into her bosom. On her refusal, because, being a
Hindu, he was not burnt, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and accepted
Islam. Afterwards renewing his petition, the earth opened and
disclosed a chapel as for a hermit. Záhir Pir entered on his charger,
and the earth closed above him and his devotions. Siryal, his widow,
reduced with his mother to poverty, mourned him and cried: “Mother
Earth, give me back my husband!” By God’s command the earth yielded
him up to visit her nightly; but every morning at daybreak he flew
away on his winged charger. Siryal had discarded her jewels as became
a widow when she lost her husband. Now that she received these secret
visits she resumed them as a matron. When her mother-in-law upbraided
her, saying: “What means this wanton finery?” she returned: “To thee
thy son is dead: to me my husband is alive.” In explanation of the
riddle she placed her beneath the bedstead at night that she might see
her son. But when Záhir Pir came at midnight his aged mother had
fallen into a deep sleep, which was undisturbed by the caresses above
her; nor was it until he had quitted the bed and vaulted into the
saddle that Siryal could rouse her. She started up and clutched his
bridle. Even then her curse prevented her from {197} seeing her son’s
face. “I do but obey thy bidding,” he groaned, turning his face away.
“Look back! thy house is burning.”[197.1] So among the Calmucks we
hear of a khan who, being married to a wife whom he did not love,
resorted to a girl living a little distance away. His visits resulted
in her pregnancy; but before the birth of her child he died. Death
does not prevent him from carrying her off to his funeral rites, nor
from afterwards paying her marital visits on the fifteenth of every
month, and spending the night with her, disappearing in the morning.
When she urges him to stay, so that his mother may see him and be
convinced of her truth, he gives her directions to go to the place of
the dead and fetch his heart. This she accomplishes, and thus recovers
him as her husband permanently.[197.2] The islanders of the East
Indian Archipelago are profoundly convinced that various kinds of
spirits can have similar intercourse with human beings. The spirits of
the dead are not excepted from this belief; and albinos are held to be
their offspring by a living mother. A famous priest-king of the
Toba-bataks, called Singa Mangaraja, owed his birth to this
cause.[197.3]
A story is told by the Dene (Athapascans) of the northern provinces of
Canada concerning a man who one night suddenly disappeared from his
wife’s side, and in the morning, in the ashes of the hearth, were
found the cloven footprints of a reindeer: he had been transformed.
{198} His wife was an adept in magic. By its aid she became an expert
hunter, and after the loss of her husband supplied the family,
consisting of her mother and little son, with food. As her son grew
up, he in turn hunted and successfully snared reindeer. One day he
caught a reindeer with human hair between its horns. He brought its
carcase to his mother, who had constantly mourned her husband. She at
once recognized the dead reindeer as her husband. Lying down along
with it, the animal revived and once more became man. Thus she
recovered the husband whom she had loved, and for whom she had so long
sorrowed. The story is ætiological, told to explain why so many
reindeer are caught with snares made of magical bonds of pine-root,
and why certain parts of the reindeer are not eaten.[198.1]
Plutarch mentions that Harpocrates was born lame, that is to say, with
his lower limbs feebly developed, and interprets this as a parable of
the new corn with its tender and imperfect shoots. We find, however,
that the offspring born of the unnatural connection with a dead man is
represented as being as remarkable as the manner of his generation,
and not infrequently monstrous. We have seen that the Toba-bataks thus
account for the birth of an albino. A story told by the Transylvanian
Gypsies concerns a girl named Mariutza of the Chale tribe, the
daughter of a wealthy chief. She loved a youth named Jarko, to whom
her father refused to give her. Her brothers caught her in his arms
one night, and slew him. They killed one of their father’s horses and
buried it with him in a grave on the edge of the forest, spreading the
report abroad that he had fled and would never return to the tribe.
She was not a witness of his death, and did not know what had become
of him. One {199} night, unable to sleep, she went out of the tent,
sat down beside a brook and wept bitterly, crying aloud: “Oh that I
could once more see him, dead or alive!” Hardly had she uttered the
words when she heard the ring of a horse’s hoofs, and her lover
galloped up on a white steed, his clothing covered with blood and his
hair with icicles. He took her up; and the steed made off to the
grave, where he lay down with her in his arms. She rested thus in her
lover’s arms until day began to break, when he sent her back to her
tent, charging her to cease from disturbing his rest any further with
her tears. As she hurried away the grave closed. After nine months she
bore a great stone that flew from tent to tent until it met her
brothers, and, striking them on the head, hurled them both dead to the
ground. Then it disappeared; and when folk came to look for Mariutza,
she too lay dead on her bed.[199.1] In a modern Icelandic tale a
youth and maiden love one another, but are prevented from marrying.
The youth dies, but after death visits his beloved by night. An old
woman in whom she confides compels the dead man to confess. He tells
her that the girl is pregnant, and will bear a son who will surpass
all men in beauty and intellect, and will become a priest; but unless
someone be found bold enough to stab him in the breast during his
first mass, the church will sink into the earth with all the people in
it. It was done; and the young priest disappeared, leaving behind on
the floor of the church nothing but three drops of blood.[199.2]
In Brittany a story is told with much circumstance of place and name,
relating how a peasant-farmer of the village of Keranniou died,
leaving a wife much younger {200} than himself and seven children.
After death he reappeared as ghost, and played a variety of tricks. At
length his widow found herself pregnant, and, seeking the priest,
confessed with tears that the deceased had lain with her several
times, insisting that he had been sent back by God because he had not
had his full tale of children. The duty of bringing into the world
one’s allotted number of children, it may be observed, is a motive in
many of the grimmer Breton stories. As her condition became visible
the neighbours taunted the unfortunate widow; but the priest took her
part openly in the church. A child was born, but without eyes. The
ghost appeared again, and took far more interest in it than in any of
the children born during his lifetime. The child was extremely
precocious, but lived only for seven months. When it died the dead
man’s ghost was seen to accompany the funeral procession. From that
hour he was never beheld again; and the villagers said he had been
waiting for the babe to lead him by the hand to Paradise.[200.1] A
similar incident is found as far away as among the Bella Coola of the
British Columbian fiords. There a husband and wife who were devoted to
one another made vows of mutual fidelity, even after the death of
either of them. The husband died; and his body was placed, as was
usual, in a little dead-hut. The widow wept bitterly, entered the
dead-hut and lay down to sleep beside the corpse. In her dreams she
saw him once more alive. He begot upon her a child, which was born
after the lapse of a fortnight. It was not like other children, for it
consisted only of a head without a body. The widow was unwilling to
exhibit such a monster; but her mother did not rest until she was
allowed to take it in her arms. When she saw what it was she let it
fall {201} in terror. The head sank into the earth and disappeared
from view.[201.1]
Cases like these suggest that Plutarch’s view of the crippled
condition in which Harpocrates was born is not to be accepted. It does
not necessarily follow that the interpretation of Osiris as a deity of
vegetation, adumbrated by the philosopher and adopted by Professor
Frazer, is wholly incorrect. We are in error if we suppose the myth of
Osiris to be one and self-consistent. The myths of Osiris were
innumerable. The realm of Egypt was formed by the union of a number of
small independent states or communities. Each of these communities had
its own customs, institutions, beliefs, _märchen_. Many stories told,
whether for serious credence or by way of pastime, in every district
were doubtless common to all Egypt. But probably even they had their
local variants; and these variants must often have been
irreconcilable. The phenomenon is familiar. It is abundantly
exemplified in the tales of the Greek and Scandinavian mythologies. In
Egypt, however, the formation of a strong central authority, and the
consequent growth and maintenance during many ages of a powerful and
educated priesthood, were among the influences that led to a
persistent attempt to unify and explain the principal divine myths, to
attach them to the various local and periodical solemnities already
observed from time immemorial, and to educe from the jumble something
like a system, a philosophy. Whether in this process an originally
independent myth had become united with a series of agricultural
rites, or whether a myth previously annexed to such rites had acquired
an independent existence by virtue of a higher inspiration, {202}
matters not to us. The story of Osiris is found on the Egyptian
monuments in a number of frequently disconnected texts, of which there
is no authoritative canon. Among those texts the exact status and
meaning of the Harpocratian episode is probably a subject on which the
Egyptians themselves would have been unable to agree. We can hardly be
wrong in indulging our scepticism at the expense of Plutarch’s
interpretation, though he may simply have reported it as it was given
to him. The parallel tales, whether of Europe or America, at least are
purely human. They yield no trace of vegetable symbolism. They are
founded upon impulses and beliefs that have all over the world
influenced the conduct of men towards the supernatural.
It was a common belief in antiquity, and thence through the Middle
Ages and right down, among the uneducated classes, to modern times,
that dead men and other supernatural beings might have intercourse
with living women. Upon this belief and the innumerable tales
connected therewith was founded Bürger’s famous ballad of
_Lenore_.[202.1] The story told by Herodotus of the paternity of
Demaratus, King of Sparta, is an early example. Demaratus, being
accused of not being the son of his predecessor, Ariston, adjured his
mother in a solemn ceremony to tell him the truth. Her account was
that, on the third night after her marriage to Ariston, an apparition
in his likeness and wearing garlands came to her, and, having embraced
her in conjugal wise, transferred to her the garlands it wore and
departed. Ariston, coming in afterwards, saw the garlands and asked
who had given them to her. She told him he had done so himself; and
when he denied {203} it she confirmed it with an oath. Ariston then
began to suspect divine interference. On making enquiry it was found
that the garlands were from the adjacent temple of the hero
Astrabakus; and the diviners identified the apparition with the hero
himself. In that night Demaratus’ mother became pregnant of
him.[203.1] Satyrs and Fauns, under the name of _incubi_, were
generally held to be guilty of criminal assaults upon women when
opportunity offered. Among the Gauls, we are told by Saint Augustine,
this kind of evil spirit was known as Dusii; and their constant
exploits, as well as those of the Silvans and Fauns, were so well
attested that to the great ecclesiastic it seemed it would be impudent
to deny them.[203.2]
Incubi were identified by later theologians with devils; and their
embraces were almost always an item in the accusation against witches
before a legal tribunal. When offspring resulted, it was naturally a
monster. The romance of Merlin, born of such a connection, born grisly
to sight and rough and not as other children, was cited as a fact by
the credulous writers of those days on witchcraft and
demonology.[203.3]
{204}
According to Bulgarian belief a ghost against which proper precautions
are not taken may cause, especially in the winter, much annoyance.
Such ghosts may even have sexual intercourse with women. As lately as
the year 1888, at the village of Orzoja, the death of a certain girl
was attributed by the people to this cause.[204.1] A Ruthenian story
represents a dead husband as haunting his wife every night for a whole
year. Whether he actually came to conjugal intercourse does not
appear. However that might have been, he gave her no rest from his
bodily attacks. Worn out, she sought for help against him, and was
advised to take poppy-seed to bed with her, to fasten upon her head a
large bowl, and to light a taper. When the dead man came as usual she
threw the poppy-seed in his face, as she had been prescribed. He asked
in a tone of surprise who had given her this advice. By way of answer
she threw more. In a fury the dead man flung himself upon her, by main
force tore the bowl from her and took to flight, apparently convinced
that he had torn off her head. The door banged after him so violently
as to split from top to bottom; and in the morning the bowl was found
some distance away, smashed to pieces. But the woman was delivered
from her tormentor from that hour.[204.2]
Sir Walter Scott’s novel, _The Pirate_, was based on the deeds and
capture of one John Gow. This man was taken prisoner in the Orkney
Islands and afterwards tried before the High Court of Admiralty in
London, condemned for piracy and executed. Before his capture he had
become affianced to an Orcadian girl. “It is {205} said,” writes Sir
Walter in the advertisement prefixed to the book, “that the lady whose
affections Gow had engaged went up to London to see him before his
death, and that, arriving too late, she had the courage to request a
sight of his dead body; and then, touching the hand of the corpse, she
formally resumed the troth-plight which she had bestowed. Without
going through this ceremony she could not, according to the
superstition of the country, have escaped a visit from the ghost of
her departed lover, in the event of her bestowing upon any living
suitor the faith which she had plighted to the dead.”[205.1] In the
Orkney Islands these superstitions were then vivid. If we may judge by
a phrase in the record of a witch-trial at Kirkwall, it was the belief
in the early part of the seventeenth century that a man slain at the
going down of the sun remained neither living nor dead, but was
capable of sexual intercourse with any woman who would yield herself
to him; in return for which he gave “a guidly fe,” in the shape of
second sight and power of divining the future.[205.2] A
circumstantial and horrible account of a series of occurrences of the
same period in Iceland is given by contemporary authorities. A man of
position named Ivar Eyjulfsson was wedded to Herdis, daughter of Sera
Magnus Jonsson of Ottrardal. They lived at Reykjarfjörd on
affectionate terms; and the husband often prayed his wife in case of
his death not to marry again, or something untoward would happen. In
the year 1604, despite foreboding dreams during the whole of the
previous winter, he went to sea with four companions. On taking leave
of his wife and father-in-law {206} as if he never expected to see
them again, he reiterated his injunctions to her to remain single. A
quarrel arose at sea between Ivar and one of his companions named Jon;
the boat foundered, and Ivar, Jon, and another of the crew were
drowned. The bodies came to shore at Langardal, and were buried in the
churchyard there. On digging the grave an older grave, lying in
heathen fashion north and south, was found; and just where the breast
of the corpse lay was a great stone, and beside it an iron arrowhead.
This incident seems to have been regarded as having some connection
with the spooks which were subsequently manifested. Whatever that
connection may have been, it speedily began to be noised abroad that
Ivar and Jon “walked,” and that their quarrel was far from being ended
with their death. After a year or two of widowhood Herdis was courted
by an honourable man, one Sturla Gottskalksson, and on her father’s
advice consented to marry him. Already, however, she had been
suffering from an ulcer on the foot; and after she had given her
consent to Sturla it became worse. Nor was this all. One night her
first husband came to her bed and had intercourse with her. Another
night she struggled with him, seizing the coverlet with her teeth to
protect herself from him. One disaster followed another. A black
blister on her tongue burst and sloughed away half of that member. In
spite of all, the formal betrothal took place; but it was followed by
such an exhibition of ghostly fury that even Sturla wished to
withdraw, and only Sera Magnus’ firmness in insisting on the wedding
prevented the engagement from being broken off. When the wedding was
solemnized, no sooner had the vows been spoken in the church than
Herdis uttered a piercing cry, and those of the company who, being
Sunday-born children, had {207} the gift of seeing spirits beheld
Ivar’s ghost approach her. Such was the horror and confusion that the
ceremony had to be cut short, and the newly wedded pair left the
church without the customary prayer and blessing. The persecution was
repeated every time that Sturla attempted to consummate the marriage,
until even ordinary folk who were not ghost-seers saw how the ghost
waylaid the unfortunate Herdis. Recourse was had to a renowned
practitioner of supernatural arts, who by his incantations succeeded
in making things somewhat quieter in the house; but after awhile
matters were as bad as ever, and his spells ceased to be effective.
Sometimes Ivar appeared alone, sometimes with Jon, and then both were
usually in fierce contest. If the word of God were read they slunk out
of the house; as soon as the reading was over they returned. Herdis
was again subjected to the dead man’s assaults; and the magician could
only protect her by setting on her lap a woman holding upright a naked
blade of steel. At length the ghost attacked the magician himself,
and, blowing in his mouth, caused him a frightful ulcer in the neck;
so that he was compelled to leave the place, declaring that he could
not cope with all the devils that followed Ivar’s ghost. Herdis sought
refuge in a chapel, but in vain. She returned home, therefore; and
shortly after, on a Sunday morning, a loud crash was heard; her bed
had broken down, and two of its timbers had fallen to the ground. That
was the culmination of the ghostly persecution. The unhappy woman
breathed her last. The magician said, when he heard of it, that the
ghost had strangled her. Then he did what, by all the rules of the
ghostlayer’s art, he ought to have done before. Venturing back to
Sturla’s house, he ordered Ivar’s grave to be opened. Ivar’s body and
that of Jon were found undecayed, but right {208} evil to look upon.
They were disinterred and burnt, and with that all manifestations came
to an end.[208.1]
This narrative is not an ordinary saga, located indeed at a specified
place, but the events of which are told of an indefinite past, or are
clustered in a manner known to all students of folklore round a
celebrated name. It is quite distinguishable in character from the
Icelandic tale I have mentioned on a previous page. It was soberly
reported in the year 1606 by persons of credit, if also of credulity,
according to our standard, while most of the actors and a number of
persons who had more or less acquaintance with the facts were yet
living; it was related as something which had occurred not within
their recollections at some distant date, but quite recently. The
ghostlayer whose services were called in survived until the year 1647,
and was well known in the island. The account therefore discloses the
kind of horrors that in that age, as in earlier ages, witness the
_Heimskringla_ and various sagas, enlivened the long gloom of an
arctic winter. Foremost among those horrors may be reckoned the belief
that dead men still, in some circumstances at any rate, retained their
sexual instincts, and attempted, not in vain, to gratify those
instincts upon living women.
Indeed, communities boasting themselves of the culture and progress of
the twentieth century have not entirely discarded the terrors born of
some such belief. I do not refer to solitary cases of mania,[208.2]
such as are probably to be found in all communities from time to time,
but to cases in which the belief has been adopted by society {209} at
large and stamped with the collective approval, or at least
acceptance. This may be said to be done when a court of law, in the
course of a judicial investigation, admits evidence of haunting and
solemnly gives judgement based upon such evidence.
On the 16th February 1912, at Macon, Georgia, in the United States of
America, the second husband of a lady was actually granted a decree of
divorce on the ground that the ghost of her first husband haunted both
his wife and himself, and the difficulty was so great that it was
utterly impossible for them to live together. It was not of course
given in evidence that the ghost committed assaults, such as those we
have just been considering. The advance of civilization since the
seventeenth century has softened the manners even of ghosts. But it
was stated that the wife had promised her former husband that she
would not marry again; she violated the promise; and it was solemnly
testified in court that the first husband’s spirit appeared nightly
with groans and reproachful glances, and only ceased to do so when the
lady left her new husband.[209.1] In our country a luckless husband
would find that the posthumous jealousy of his predecessor in the
_ménage_ is no ground for divorce. Since the days of the witch-trials
our courts have remained unmoved by ghostly perturbations. They have
even been known to refuse assistance to the tenant of a haunted house.
But Europe is effete.
In the lower culture it is otherwise. The Ewhe of Togoland believe in
the possibility of conjugal intercourse and other communion between a
dead and a living spouse; but when it takes place it results in death
to the survivor. Stringent measures are therefore adopted to prevent
it. These measures are all the more necessary, since the {210}
survivor must during the period of mourning--in which all the danger
seems to be concentrated--lay aside all clothing and ornaments and go
entirely naked. A widow for the first six weeks has nothing to fear so
much as her deceased husband. She must remain all that time in the hut
beneath which her husband is buried, only leaving it for short
intervals to bathe and for other necessary purposes. In token of
mourning she goes with bowed head and eyes bent down, crossing her
arms over her breast so that the left hand rests on the right
shoulder, in order that “no mischief befall her from the dead man.”
She also carries a club to drive him away in case he wish to approach
her, otherwise there would immediately be an end of her.[210.1] She
sleeps, moreover, on the club, because, if she did not, he would take
it away from her unperceived. Ashes must be mingled with her food and
drink to prevent her husband from partaking of it--a sign probably of
the renewal of conjugal life--in which case she would die. She must
not answer any call, must eat neither beans, nor flesh nor fish, drink
neither palm-wine nor rum; for any infringement of these prohibitions
would cost her life. Smoking is the only solace permitted to her.
During the night a charcoal fire is kept up in the hut; and upon this
fire she strews a powder, consisting of peppermint-leaves dried and
rubbed down, and red pepper, so as to cause an evil-smelling smoke,
which makes the dead man--it would make any living man--averse to
entering.[210.2] After the death of his wife {211} a man, in some
districts at all events, must remain for three days in his hut and
abstain from intercourse with his other wives. At the expiration of
this period the women of the town assemble and wash him with medicine
prepared by the witch-doctor. Without this precaution none of his
other wives would dare to come near him, lest they too should
die.[211.1]
Before passing to another cultural area we may note two other
significant customs in Togoland. Weddings there, as elsewhere, are
occasions of festivity; and the firing of guns is doubtless an
expression of joy and triumph, for the Negro delights in noise. Even
when, among the Akposso, in the administrative district of Atakpame, a
man succeeds in seducing a married woman away from her husband into
his own house, he fires a gun, for he says: “I have now a new wife!”
With that the marriage is concluded, and he gives a great feast and
defies the former husband, who sometimes attempts to recover her by
force. But if the former husband be dead he fires no gun on marrying
the widow.[211.2] On the other hand, when a man’s wife dies in her
house the husband fears to enter it again, and it is usually
destroyed. Even where it is not destroyed, it is never again entered
by the widower or any of his relations or dependants. Only a stranger
not belonging to his {212} family may dare to dwell there. If the
widower take a new wife, he builds her a new house.[212.1] To build a
new house for a new wife is usual; what is important to observe here
is that the old house in which the deceased wife dwelt may be safely
inhabited by a stranger, and only by a stranger.
Precautions like those of the Togo are taken by widows in Loango. All
the openings in a widow’s hut are closed, and a spell is laid on every
place where the ghost might harbour. But that is not enough. What she
fears is that her deceased husband, or some other disembodied spirit
greedy of her society, will visit her by night. That would result
either in her death, or in her bringing some fearful monster into the
world. So the medicine-men prepare for her, according to the rules of
their art, a piece of wood wherewith to fasten the door by way of bar
or bolt; or they give her a fringed cord to stretch behind, and
another to stretch round, her bed, both of them of course enchanted.
More than this, the door of the hut is changed to another side,
further to mystify the unwelcome _revenant_. If she be very nervous
they lead her in the darkness by a roundabout way to another hut,
carefully erasing her footsteps, unless they carry her or make her
wear shoes that will render the traces unrecognizable. Besides that,
they furnish her with a magical staff to embrace when she goes to
sleep. Sometimes at least it is carried in daylight also. One would
think such precautions would daunt the most evil-designing ghost. If
any ghost, however, were so obdurate, or so conceited of his {213}
power to break down these defences, as to persist, he would find they
were mere outworks, and that there were stronger and more effectual
lines behind. The witch-doctors are not easily beaten--provided they
have a client who is willing and able to pay the enhanced cost of
their services. Without going into all the details of what is in
effect a war to the bitter end against the intrusive ghost, it may be
said generally that they will give him no rest; they will beat the
dwelling inside and outside with their conjuring implements; they will
sweep the courtyard clear; they will leave no corner where the poor
wretch can skulk; they will lay spells; they will hunt him through the
village with beating, with sweeping, with fire, with the discharge of
guns; they will rouse the whole population to their assistance; they
will lay bombs laden with magical virtue; they will stretch magical
cords across every path leading to the village. If, in spite of all
these boisterous proceedings, the ghost be so hardy or so clever as to
continue haunting the place, there will be nothing for it but to
remove the village, or to catch the supernatural enemy and to shoot
him dead beyond resurrection. But this is obviously an extreme
measure, to which it is seldom necessary to resort, and which can only
be undertaken by a specialist of the first rank and at a corresponding
cost. The ghosts of deceased men are, in Loango, scarcely more to be
dreaded than those of women dead in childbed, or of marriageable
girls. The former are especially dreaded by pregnant women and married
men, for their vengeful malice. The latter attack married men in their
sleep, or seduce them under varied forms; and to yield means impotence
or death.[213.1]
{214}
A little further to the south, beyond the Congo, it was the custom in
Matiambo for widows to sacrifice themselves, together with the slaves
of the deceased, who were sent to accompany their master into the
other world. Widows who neglected to do so, and who escaped victorious
from the ordeal for witchcraft, felt the soul of the departed spouse
oppressing their breasts; and the witch-doctor was required to purify
them before they ventured to contract a new marriage.[214.1] The
process of purification is not described, but is probably like that
reported by a missionary who has spent many years on the Congo. The
widow must go to a running stream, taking her husband’s bed and one or
two of the articles he has commonly used. These are all placed in the
middle of the stream; and after she has well washed she sits on the
bed. The witch-doctor dips her three times in the water and then
dresses her; the bed and other articles are broken and thrown down the
stream to float away. She is led out of the stream; a raw egg is
broken, and she swallows it; a toad is killed, and some of the blood
rubbed on her lips; lastly, a fowl is killed and hung by the
roadside--presumably a sacrifice to the deceased. She returns to her
town. On arriving there, {215} she sits on the ground, stretching out
her legs before her, and her deceased husband’s brother steps over
them. She is then free to marry again; but inasmuch as widows are not
allowed to marry for a year or two after the husband’s death, the rite
is most likely not performed until the end of that period. It is only
necessary after the death of a first husband. Corresponding ceremonies
are necessary for a man after his first wife’s death. He may not leave
his house, except at night, for six days, and he must sleep only on a
basket made by plaiting together two palm-fronds. He then undergoes a
similar purification to that just described, with some additional
precautions. On returning home his deceased wife’s sister steps over
his legs. No woman would dare to marry him until these rites are
performed.[215.1] Although they do not seem to be confined to cases
in which oppression by the ghost is endured, it is fairly certain that
their object is to get rid, not merely of the death-pollution, but of
the ghost. We shall see directly what is the meaning of the ceremonial
stepping over the survivor’s legs.
Meanwhile let us cross the continent to Delagoa Bay. The neighbourhood
of Delagoa Bay, together with a large extent of country to the north
in Portuguese and across the border in British territory, is occupied
by various branches of a Bantu people frequently known as Shangaans,
but which it is convenient to call the Thonga, a name proposed by M.
Henri Junod, a Swiss Protestant missionary. The tribe more immediately
around the Bay is called the Baronga. The rites of purification
practised by the Thonga on different occasions--among others, notably
after a death--are very remarkable, and indicate a considerable
preoccupation with sexual matters. These rites have been carefully
described by M. Junod, but {216} they have not yet been sufficiently
studied to enable us to pronounce on the meaning of them all. I shall
therefore only refer to one or two.
The death-pollution affects not merely all who come into contact with
the corpse; it affects the entire kin, and indeed the whole of the
village in which the deceased resided, whether related to him or not.
But it affects especially his wives, and among these his principal or
“great” wife. Like the grave-diggers who have been handling the
corpse, she is required to take a sweat-bath. She is required,
moreover, to fumigate herself over a fire of dry grass from the roof
of the hut, mingled with cock’s dung (not hen’s). A reed or a strip of
palm-leaf with a few other leaves suspended to it is then put round
her waist. She enters the hut, which has been already unroofed,
wailing to her deceased husband, and crawls out again by the hole at
the back made to remove the corpse, as if she were herself a corpse.
She cannot remain there. A new hut is therefore built for her; and
there she must afterwards sleep, until the days of her purification
are accomplished and she passes into the possession of her husband’s
kinsman to whom she is assigned. Even for the subordinate wives (who
have their own rites of purification to observe) it would be dangerous
to sleep on the very ground where they have been accustomed to meet
the deceased: hence their huts must also be removed. It is difficult
to understand what danger they are exposed to, unless it be assaults
from the ghost. The huts they occupy do not seem to be polluted, at
least beyond the general pollution of the village, or they could not
continue to occupy them. But the sites must be changed; and this can
hardly be for any other purpose than to mystify the ghost.[216.1]
{217}
Turning now to two other widely separated cultural regions, we will
first of all notice a significant article of dress worn by a widow in
the eastern islands of Torres Straits. The ordinary dress of a woman
comprised invariably a petticoat (sometimes more than one) of ample
size, extending from the waist to the knee or thereabouts, and made of
split leaves or bark-fibre. But a widow, and she alone, “twisted up a
petticoat of banana leaves, and, passing it between her legs, fixed it
at her waistband. This was the first sign of widowhood,” and had a
special name. It was put on as soon as the preliminary ceremonies had
finished, and prior to the removal of the body for the purpose of
mummification. The widow continued to wear it after she had discarded
every other sign of mourning, and until she married again.[217.1] In
the Mekeo district of British New Guinea, inhabited by a population
consisting, so far as has been ascertained, of a fusion of Melanesians
and Papuans, the lot of a widower is not a happy one. So closely is he
haunted by the ghost of his deceased wife that he becomes a social
outcast, shunned by everyone, and loses all civil rights, such is the
horror he inspires. Excluded thus {218} from communion with his
fellow-men, he skulks alone in the long grass and the bushes; for he
must not be seen. He invariably carries, like the Ewhe widow, a
tomahawk to defend himself against the dreaded spirit of his departed
spouse, who, we are told, would do him an ill turn if she could. This
may, to be sure, as the missionary to whom we are indebted for the
report presents it, be no more than the natural malignancy of the
dead, whose chief delight is to harm the living.[218.1] The
missionary, however, may not have penetrated the true inwardness of
the superstition. At all events, elsewhere there is no room for doubt.
Among the Indians of the Thompson River in British Columbia both
widows and widowers took elaborate precautions against the persecution
of their deceased spouses. Directly death occurred the survivor went
out and passed four times through a patch of rose-bushes, doubtless to
ensure that the spirit should not cling to him or her. Probably for
the same end ablutions in the creeks morning and evening for a year
were prescribed. Rigid abstention from certain kinds of food was part
of the discipline; and, contrary to the practice of the Ewhe, tobacco
was also forbidden. During a whole year the survivor was required to
sleep on a bed made of fir-branches, on which rose-bush sticks were
also spread at the head and foot, while in the middle were not only
rose-bush sticks, but also branches of bearberry, mountain-ash,
juniper, sage, and so forth. A widow could neither lie or sit where
her children slept, nor let them lie down {219} on her bed. Finally, a
widow often wore a breech-cloth made of dry bunch-grass for several
days, that the ghost of her husband should not have conjugal
intercourse with her.[219.1] The aborigines of Hispaniola also
believed that the dead walked in the night and entered into converse
with living people, even in their beds; but if we may trust Peter
Martyr, though in human shape they thus approached women, seeking
sexual intercourse, “when the matter cometh to actual deede,” suddenly
they vanished away.[219.2] Our information concerning this
unfortunate people, speedily destroyed by the Spaniards, is extremely
meagre; and we do not know whether any precautions were taken against
these ghostly visits. Among the Tarahumares of Mexico three great
feasts are given at intervals after a death. Until the last of them is
held the deceased hangs about the neighbourhood. Their object
therefore is to get rid of the ghost. To that end he is presented with
gifts and adjured to depart with them, and not to come and disturb the
survivors. At the second, and especially at the third feast,
ceremonial races are performed, in order to chase him away. Hikuli,
the sacred plant of the Tarahumares, plays a prominent part in these
festivities, for it “is thought to be very powerful in running off the
dead, chasing them to the end of the world, where they join the other
dead.” The third feast, the most elaborate of all, is deemed to be at
last effectual. Not until it is over “will a widower or a widow marry
again, being more afraid of the dead than are the other
relatives.”[219.3] It is {220} not expressly stated what their fear
is; but in the light of other examples it is perhaps not unreasonable
to suspect that it arises from jealousy on the part of the deceased.
At all events I have shown that among the Negroes on the northern
shore of the Gulf of Guinea, among the Bantu about the Lower Congo,
and among the Indians of the Thompson River in British Columbia, the
fear is seriously entertained that the deceased will seek a renewal of
conjugal intercourse, and the utmost precautions are taken to prevent
it. The precautions taken by the Baronga (also a Bantu tribe) in
South-East Africa, and by some Melanesian peoples of the Torres
Straits Islands and the mainland of New Guinea, strongly suggest the
same fear. The ancient inhabitants of Hispaniola attributed sexual
desires to the dead, though they do not seem to have believed in the
possibility of their accomplishment; and the Tarahumare husband or
wife is afraid to marry again until the deceased spouse has been
finally driven away from the society of the living to herd with the
other dead at the end of the world. It is very striking that the
populations of areas so widely different in race and culture, as well
as so far apart in space, as some of these, should display the
identical terror exhibited in the tales and superstitions cited from
ancient and modern Europe and from China. The story of the generation
of Harpocrates, though related of a god, points to similar ideas in
ancient Egypt; and it has its analogues in India and the East Indian
Archipelago.
Practices exist, moreover, in other countries that seem to bear
witness to the same terror, though the terror itself is not recorded.
In such cases they may be indirect evidence of its existence. The
practices I refer to are such as that among the Kikuyu and Anyanja in
East-Central {221} Africa. The former are a tribe Bantu in speech and
mainly Bantu in blood and custom, though mingled with other elements.
On the third day after the burial of a husband the elders assemble at
the village to kill a ram. This ceremony has the effect of cleansing
the village at large “from the stain of death”; but something more is
needed by the widow. Accordingly “the elders bring with them one of
their number who is very poor, and of the same clan as the deceased,
and he has to sleep in the hut of the senior widow of the deceased,”
and to have sexual relations with her. His poverty, and the rule that
“he generally lives on in the village and is looked upon as a
stepfather to the children,” point to the service he thus performs
being considered attended with some danger, and therefore not to be
undertaken except in hope of an adequate reward.[221.1] The Anyanja,
likewise a Bantu tribe, settled at the southern end of Lake Nyasa,
hold a beer-drinking accompanied by dance and song a month after the
burial, which takes place two or three days after the death. Up to
that time conjugal relations are forbidden throughout the village of
the deceased. The widow or widower and then each relative in turn is
shaved, and cohabitation by all except the widow is resumed. She must
wait until the second beer-drinking, six months or a year later. At
this second ceremony dancing takes place on the first night, and beer
is drunk the next day. Before sunset on the first day the widow is
again shaven, and the mother of the deceased informs her that she is
now free to marry again. That night “she has to sleep with a man paid
by her {222} relations.” He is not her permanent husband; his services
are merely required as a preliminary to her marriage. According to the
account from which I am quoting it would appear that she may marry
after mourning two or three months, but not without the same previous
ritual coition, else “her second husband would die, should she have
committed adultery.” A widower, on the other hand, “mourns five or six
months and is then given medicine, after which he may marry again, and
without which, should he marry, his new wife would die.”[222.1] There
are some difficulties here. It seems clear that until the mourning is
over the widows cannot marry again, and the length of mourning is
decided by the relatives of the deceased; it is closed with the
beer-drinking. When it is over, the widows select their husbands from
among the kindred of the deceased; he who marries the chief wife is
the heir. A widow cannot marry outside this limited circle, unless
she, or her new husband, be prepared to repay her bride-price, and
often more. Customs doubtless differ, but this is the usual course. It
is curious too that the second husband of a widow should die, if he
married her without the previous coition by another man, only if she
had committed adultery, whereas the woman marrying a widower will die
in any case if he have not had medicine. It is probable that there has
been some misunderstanding of the informants and that the second
husband runs the risk of death in any case by wedding a widow who has
not undergone the regular preliminary.[222.2] The probability is
confirmed by the practice of the Yaos, a neighbouring tribe, among
whom the second husband {223} pays a man to pass a night with the
widow before he takes her.[223.1] A further example may be given from
a wholly different cultural area. Among the Kamtchadals no one would
be willing to marry a widow “unless her sins have been previously
taken away by the highest degree of familiarity granted to anyone who
wishes to render her this service.” The writer to whom we are indebted
for the information reported in the eighteenth century that the
natives imagined that this expiation might cause the expiator to die
like the defunct husband, so that the poor women would remain widows
but for the assistance of the Russian soldiers, who were not afraid of
exposing themselves to a danger so equivocal.[223.2]
The Kikuyu, Anyanja and Kamtchadal customs are evidently the same. The
penalty for non-observance, though not expressed in our account of the
Kikuyu custom, is, it will hardly be questioned, the same as in the
other two; it is the death of the second husband. What I venture to
suggest, in view of the other Bantu customs already laid before the
reader, is that the risk actually run by marrying or cohabiting with
the widow is that of death from the posthumous jealousy of the
deceased. The fact that the deceased is still supposed to desire a
continuance of conjugal relations renders it natural to think that,
even where the extreme terrors that torture the widow in some places
are not shown, the belief may linger in his jealousy of other men, who
do what he perhaps is no longer conceived capable of. The suggestion
derives support from the rites performed about the Lower Congo. There,
it will be remembered, the terror of a dead husband is excessive. The
elaborate {224} purification of the widow, every incident of which
points to the desire to rid her of his attentions, culminates in his
brother stepping over her outstretched legs.
Now the act of stepping over another is everywhere regarded as one of
great rudeness, if not insult. More than this, it is regarded as
likely to communicate some mysterious injury or to take away some
luck, good quality or advantage from the person who is thus treated.
Hence it is often hotly resented. Without going beyond the Congo
region, it is enough to note that in Loango to step over a child is to
interfere with his development--in other words, to stop his growth; to
step over an adult is to transfer to him every evil from which one may
be suffering. It is not good even to reach, or to throw anything,
across him; and if such a thing be done, the action must be repeated
in the contrary direction, in order, it would seem, to reverse the
spell.[224.1] But in the ceremony of purification an act in ordinary
circumstances so injurious is ritually performed for some beneficial
effect. This may be simply to take away some evil; it may be to
dispossess finally and for ever the tenacious ghost, in case all the
previous efforts have proved unavailing. But the difference of the
performer’s sex means surely more than this. When a widow is purified,
her husband’s brother performs the final rite; when it is a widower,
his wife’s sister. Now it will be observed these persons belong to the
precise class from which the next spouse is to be taken. When the
husband dies the widow becomes the wife of one of his brothers; when
the wife dies the husband demands another wife from her
family.[224.2] The act of stepping over the widow or widower,
therefore, seems to symbolize the taking of possession by one of the
persons entitled to do so.
{225}
Let us turn to the Baganda, a Bantu people on the highest pitch of
civilization to which any branch of the race had attained prior to the
coming of the white man. There we find that jumping over a woman, or
stepping over her legs, is regarded as “equivalent to, or instead of,
having sexual connection with her.” “For a woman to sit with her legs
straight in front of her, or apart, was looked upon as unbecoming; and
for any man to step over her legs was equivalent to having intercourse
with her. The mere fact of stepping over a wife, or over some of her
clothing, was a method frequently followed to end a taboo which
necessitated intercourse” (_scil._, to end it).[225.1] The act is
performed on a variety of ceremonial occasions when coition would be
inconvenient. To mention only one, the king had an officer of the
court, a relative of his own, called the Kauzumu, whose duty it was to
fulfil certain rites and taboos for him, and thus to save him from
inconvenience. Among others, it was said that in former times it was
his duty to take the women who were to become the king’s wives for one
night to his bed. To the latest period of national independence, when
one of the king’s wives died and her clan sent another in her place,
the Kauzumu jumped over her before presenting her to the king.[225.2]
By this act the taboo was removed, the danger, whatever it was, was
diverted from the king to the Kauzumu. We may safely infer that the
act of stepping over the legs of the surviving spouse in the Congo
region is a symbolic coition. It is performed by one who belongs to
the class of prospective spouses, though probably after the
performance {226} of such a ceremony not the one who would actually
wed the survivor; for its object, if I am right, is to take on the
shoulders of the performer the consequences which would otherwise
light on the new consort.[226.1]
Though not by any means so conclusively as the practices just
discussed, the delay between the ending of a first marriage by the
death of one of the parties and the second marriage of the other party
seems to indicate the same dread of the deceased. The mourning
ceremonies must usually all be accomplished before the survivor, at
all events if a woman, can be married again. With the completion of
the mourning ceremonies it is a common belief, of which we have had
more than one instance, that the deceased is finally despatched to the
society of the dead; in any case, he is at rest, and is very often
speedily forgotten. Among the Namib-Bushmen of South-West Africa, a
mongrel people, the result of the intermingling of probably many
broken tribes with an original stock of Hottentots, marriage is
monogamous. That does not mean that death only can separate the
married pair. If separation between two living spouses take place,
either can marry again forthwith. But if the separation be caused by
death, something like half a year (that is to say, either a rainy or a
dry season) must elapse before re-marriage; for, we are told, the
belief prevails that, for example, the woman whom a widower marries
without waiting will soon herself die. And when the widower does
venture on a new marriage, it must be to {227} a sister of his
deceased wife if there be one at liberty.[227.1] So in the Togo
district of Atakpame, a woman who is left by her husband, even if only
for a time, may be taken by another man; and this, it seems, under
German rule renders it difficult to get men to work at the making of
roads, for his absence will cost the labourer his wife. But when a man
dies his widow must wait for three farm-years (a farm-year equals ten
months) before she marries again. The delay seems not to be popular.
In the western portion of the district, among the Akposso, the time
has been shortened to two years, while in the eastern portion, where
the people are less purely Akposso, the widow marries after eleven
months. The modern Akposso widow holds it silly to wait longer: she
has not murdered her first husband, and therefore she ought, she
thinks, to be able to marry sooner. But she must wait these eleven
months, else she would die. If, however, her husband has been hanged
for murder or some other reason, she may marry at the end of two or
three months. The ground alleged for this shortening of the period of
delay is economic. There seems to be no rule requiring the widow to be
taken by a surviving member of the husband’s family, though the
children resulting from a second marriage belong to it. If she cannot
find another husband, therefore, she must go back to her own family
and she may become a burden upon it. On marrying she must work in her
husband’s fields, for the benefit of himself and his family. But she
is entitled to a small field for herself, out of which she may make
her own profit; and there is now plenty of money in the country, and a
general desire to earn as {228} much of it and as soon as
possible.[228.1] All this may be very true; but seeing that the widow
who marries prematurely must die, she will not be likely to run so
serious a risk for the chance of making a little money. If we are
right in supposing that the death-penalty is one exacted by the
deceased, the conjecture will not be deemed unreasonable that hanging
is believed to inflict such injuries on the ghost that its
interference is not to be dreaded. The mode of death and the
mutilations (if any) inflicted on the corpse are widely held to affect
the departed in the future life.
Jealousy is a passion by no means confined to the male sex. In the
lower culture it is believed to continue to inspire women as well as
men, even after death. If not so prominent a superstition as the
belief in masculine jealousy, this is perhaps to be accounted for
partly by the generally dominant position in the household and in
society of the man, partly to the widespread habit of polygamy, and
partly to the physiological rule that the decay of sexual impulse
makes its appearance earlier in women than in men. We have already
found examples of customs pointing to posthumous feminine jealousy
among various races in both hemispheres. One or two other examples may
be given.
Among the Bantu tribes of North-Eastern Rhodesia, when a married woman
dies her husband sends to her father for another wife in her stead. A
sister or some such relative of the deceased is the proper person to
take her place. If there be none unmarried and therefore available, a
married sister of the deceased must spend one or two nights with the
widower “to take the death from off his body.”[228.2] This is so much
in harmony with {229} the Bantu practices previously considered, that
we can only suppose the deceased would acquiesce in her sister’s
succession to her rights, but would feel jealous and angry at the
intrusion of another woman. The women of these tribes are
high-spirited and jealous, those of the Awemba being proverbially
fierce. Among most of the tribes it is imperative for the bridegroom
to move into the bride’s parents’ village, where he will always be
under the eye of his mother-in-law, and where, no doubt, in case of
the wife’s death, a sister or other relation would be conveniently
handy to step into her shoes. Indeed, among the Awemba the wife often
relinquishes her position voluntarily to another member of the family.
When she “has presented her husband with two or three children she
considers that she has fulfilled her marriage obligations towards him.
With his consent, which as a rule is not difficult to obtain, she
hands over her niece as a substitute. The niece inherits her aunt’s
position, and cares for her children, while the aunt retires to the
peace of a single life, or very often finds a new partner.”[229.1]
Thus it may be presumed that a dead wife, if she returned and found a
relative of her own in her husband’s arms, would submit to a
relationship between them such as she herself might in a year or two
have voluntarily initiated, satisfied that her children, if any, would
be looked after. How long that relationship would last (and divorce is
quite an everyday occurrence) would be no concern of hers, and she
would not trouble herself further in the matter. The next woman whom
her husband married would therefore be rendered safe: the “death”
would have been taken off his body.
In India the widows of the higher castes are not allowed to marry
again. Among the aboriginal tribes {230} widows who do so often marry
“under cover of darkness, and with the aid of certain ceremonies
commonly relied upon as a protection against spirits.” If in spite of
these precautions the woman should be troubled by her departed
husband, he is placated, as among the Kolīs of Ahmadnagar, by a tiny
image of himself worn in a copper case round her neck, or set among
the household gods, and by the expenditure of money in
charity.[230.1] But the spirit of a dead wife is more troublesome.
Her character for jealousy and malice is perhaps partly due to
confusion with a woman dead in childbirth or pregnancy, or who has
never had a child. A ghost of this kind is greatly dreaded.[230.2]
The ghosts of ordinary married women are, however, not to be despised.
They perform all sorts of unpleasant tricks on the survivors, not the
least of which are the attacks they make on their successors in their
husbands’ affections. Happily these attacks can be warded off by a
judicious homage to the departed or a pretended identification of the
deceased with her successor. Thus among the Gaddis, a Hindu sect in
the Panjab, when the first wife dies the second wears a silver plate
called _saukan mora_, or crown of the rival wife. This plate
represents the deceased, and is propitiated to avert her
hostility.[230.3] Indeed, the practice is not confined to one sect:
it is common to several of the castes. The widower hangs a miniature
portrait of his former wife, or even her name engraved on a silver or
gold plate, about the new bride’s neck. The object, it has been
suggested, is to humour the spirit of the first wife by identifying
her with the second, thus proving the husband’s fidelity. In the {231}
Central Panjab, on the other hand, the bride is dressed as a milkmaid,
or a flower-seller, and given a servile nickname, apparently to
convince the spirit of the deceased that the girl being married is not
a real wife, but a slave-girl. When the death of the second wife shows
that the device has been unsuccessful, a mock-marriage of the
bridegroom to a tree or a sheep, adorned like a bride, is resorted to
before his marriage with a woman. “It is interesting to watch the
bedecked sheep sitting on the _khárás_ (reversed baskets) with a
bridegroom and being led by him round the sacrificial fire, while the
real bride sits by.” Here it is doubtless intended to fix the
attention of the deceased upon the tree or the sheep, and so leave the
real wife free from her jealousy. After the death of the third wife
the evil influence of the first is deemed to be exhausted.[231.1] The
Lets of Bengal, who are also Hindus in religion, permit their widows
to marry again, though not by the rite for a virgin-bride. The second
husband is usually a widower; and he places the iron bangle of his
former wife on his new wife’s arm.[231.2] So in Baroda a widower who
marries again has to present to his new wife a neck-ornament with
marks to represent the feet of his first wife. She will wear this to
prevent the ghost of the latter from troubling her.[231.3]
It need hardly be said that the rites and tales here discussed involve
something more than the belief in the survival of death by a bare
human personality. They could not have come into existence without the
belief that what remained after the catastrophe was still in some
degree a sentient and powerful being. It is difficult for mankind to
acquiesce in the reality of death. The imagination refuses to harbour
the thought of the cessation of conscious existence. {232} The dead,
although they appear to respond no longer to the physical and social
stimuli hitherto effective, must still be. Vanished from our ordinary
ken, they must be living somewhere, somehow; they cannot have been
annihilated. If they still live, they must live under conditions
analogous to those we know, and with affections, desires, appetites,
aversions, similar to those they had in this life, though the objects
may conceivably be changed. Hence every sort of activity known to man
is ascribed to them. In dreams, in trances, and in the phenomena of
possession they are observed to carry on these activities. But because
they are observed to carry them on only under such mysterious
conditions they repel the survivors and fill them with an undefinable
horror and awe. Among the affections and appetites of mankind those
connected with the sexual life are almost the strongest. It is natural
therefore to imagine that the dead will still endeavour, by social and
even by fleshly intercourse with the survivors, to gratify them. For
if the belief in their activity in other directions be conceded, this
cannot be denied; and perhaps the very horror that would be inspired
by the ultimate stages of such a possibility serves to attract the
thoughts, and therefore the belief, of peoples on the lower planes of
civilization.
Ill weeds grow rank in such a soil. Not only are sexual appetites and
affections almost the strongest; but, as is now well recognized, in
the complex attitude of mankind to the invisible world they have no
inconsiderable share. Marriage is a status hemmed about by many taboos
and easily lending itself to mystical presentation. It is natural that
the demise of one of the parties should cause a shock to the survivor
corresponding to the change of condition involved, and should
powerfully affect the sexual impulses. Even {233} apart from marriage
they are an object on which the thought of mankind, whether savage or
civilized, broods with a persistent endeavour to solve the mystery
surrounding them. Hints are seen in them for the solution of many a
problem other than that of the propagation of the species. The ideas
suggested by their contemplation are utilized alike for practical and
economical purposes (for example, in agricultural magic), and for
speculation on the transcendent themes of life and death and the
constitution of the universe. The tales and superstitions I have
brought together exhibit these impulses emphasizing the terror of the
dead. Many of the phenomena of dreams, and the phenomena of hysteria
and various forms of delusion are due to the sexual impulses. The
sexual impulses in turn are in many, if not all, of the cases referred
to above greatly aided by the conditions imposed on the patient. No
less than luxury and over-feeding, fasting and abstinence from the
ordinary and reasonable gratification of animal appetites, and from
social intercourse, are the parents of nightmare and delusion. Both
extremes lead through physical disturbances to disorders of the
imagination and the reason. Hermits and celibates have probably
suffered even more than rakes and gluttons and drunkards. The annals
of monasticism with tiresome and pitiful iteration record the
disastrous effects of asceticism upon body and mind. Among savage and
barbarous peoples these effects are as a rule less noxious, because
the conditions inducing and accelerating them are less continuous. But
it is precisely at the time when sexual relations are put out of
normal gear, and the sexual impulses are left without their normal
gratification, that exclusion from society and abstinence, sometimes
from sleep, always {234} from food usual in quality and amount, are
imposed. The imagination, already stimulated by the shock of the death
(rarely attributed to natural causes), the possibility of an
accusation of witchcraft hanging over the widow’s head, the certainty
in many cases (as among the tribes of British Columbia) of a long
period of hardship and even torture, all combine with the exclusion
and enforced abstinence to produce a state of unnatural excitement,
amounting at times to terror and delusion--in any case liable
powerfully to affect the dreams, and to produce hysteria.
It must be remembered that the entire community shares to the full the
underlying beliefs, and participates in varying degrees in the fears
of the bereaved spouse. We are familiar even in Europe with the effect
upon a crowd--nay, upon an entire nation--of emotions felt in common.
They are intensified. The atmosphere becomes electrical, and a spark
suffices to produce a conflagration. When the object of the emotion is
strange, imperfectly apprehended, mysterious, the effect is
heightened; it becomes a species of insanity. Things are imagined
which do not exist; eyewitnesses attest what a dispassionate observer
knows to be impossibilities. The most appalling of the tales and the
most vivid of the rites we have been considering are thus easily
accounted for. The marvel is that they are not more widely distributed
over the world than our present information enables us to affirm.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MOURNING
CLOTHES
{235}
It is a commonplace among anthropologists that certain events in a
community cause a state of taboo, which affects the members of the
community in a greater or less degree, according to their nearness of
place or blood to the person principally concerned, or according to
the magnitude of the event. Among these events a death is not the
least important. In the lower culture the whole village or settlement
is often attainted by the occurrence of a death. But it is more
particularly the near relatives, and those who have been brought into
contact with the corpse, who are affected by the death-taboo (or, as
it is often called, the death-pollution), most of all the widow or
widower. We call the period of the death-taboo--mourning. The duration
of the taboo, as well as its intensity, varies among different
peoples, and not only according to the relationship of the mourners to
the deceased, but also to his rank, from a few days to many months,
and even to years. It is very rare that there is no mourning on a
death; but if our reports may be trusted, there are a few cases,
which, however, need not detain us.
Mourning garb is an essential part of the observances. Its object has
been much debated by anthropologists. There seems little doubt that
its first object is to distinguish those who are under the taboo from
other persons: it is the sign of the plague. Professor Frazer {236}
many years ago laid it down “that mourning costume is usually the
reverse of that in ordinary life.” He cited (among others) the
practice at Rome for the sons of the deceased to walk at the funeral
with their heads covered, the daughters with their heads uncovered,
and that in Greece for men and women during the period of mourning to
invert their usual habits of wearing the hair, the ordinary practice
of men being to cut it short and that of women to wear it
long.[236.1] The accuracy of the generalization might be illustrated
from examples all over the world. The Arapaho, who wear their hair
long and braided, when in mourning unbraid it and wear it unbound.
Sometimes they cut it. They wear old clothing, and do not paint
themselves as they are accustomed to do.[236.2] Among the Bangala of
the Upper Congo men sometimes wear women’s dresses instead of their
own, and shave half the hair of the head, or shave it in patches, and
they rub clay on their bodies. Widows dress in only a few leaves or go
stark naked, but with dirt or clay rubbed on the body. For three
months after the funeral and a period of retirement in the bush they
wear long, untidy-looking grass cloths.[236.3] When following a
corpse to the grave Ainu mourners wear their coats inside out and
upside down. An Ainu’s hair is never cut, except on the death of
husband or wife; and then cutting is obligatory.[236.4] Among the
Iban of Sarawak a widow’s mourning lasts until the final ceremonies,
sometimes two years after the death. During that time she may not wear
any ornament, her dress must be plain and old; and she is not allowed
to pull out her eyelashes and eyebrows, nor to use soap for {237}
washing. Whatever acquaintance she may have in ordinary life with
soap, the prohibition to pull out her eyelashes and eyebrows is a
prohibition of the last and most seductive touches of her toilet: no
Iban woman would think of wearing eyelashes and eyebrows if she were
not a widow in mourning.[237.1] By reversing the usual costume the
mourner is distinguished from others, notice is given to the world of
the taboo that binds him.
For this reason many of the aborigines of British Guiana lay their
trinkets aside and go entirely naked; and among the Jiraras or Ayricas
the wife, brothers and sisters of the deceased paint themselves all
over with the juice of a fruit that renders them as black as Negroes,
while relatives less near paint only their feet, legs, arms and part
of the face: they are not so deeply compromised.[237.2] So on the
Ivory Coast the Ngoulango or Pakhalla mourners put off their
ornaments, put on the head a worn-out loin-cloth and wear brown
clothing, marking different parts of the body with red earth. If
anything more were necessary to exhibit their state of taboo, it would
be the practice of widows when they went out of doors to carry a piece
of “fetish” wood, endowed with the power of causing death to anyone
who approached them and touched it.[237.3] In Australia the
relatives, especially the women, cover their heads with clay, or in
some parts of West Australia with red mud.[237.4] The Warramunga
women in the Northern Territory cover themselves from head to foot
with pipeclay.[237.5] Among the Uriyas of India, whose women are
particularly fond of gay colours, a widow wears a plain white
borderless _sari_, or cloth, as {238} the sign of her
bereavement.[238.1] The Man Cao Lan of Tonkin wear white garments not
hemmed; and those of their women who have adopted the Annamite
trousers recur to the native petticoat.[238.2]
The colours of the mourning garb vary widely. Dr Frazer has collected
a considerable list, to which it is needless to add. Let it suffice to
say that though emblematic colours are often used, the main principle,
especially in the lower culture, is that just discussed of reversing,
or wearing something quite distinctive from, the ordinary costume.
The condition of taboo occasioned by a death, it should be noted, is
by no means limited to the death of a human being. Among the ancient
Egyptians the Mendesians observed a great mourning on the death of a
goat; and more generally when a cat died by a natural death everyone
in the house shaved his eyebrows, while on the death of a dog the
whole head and body were shaved. Both these and other animals were
also accorded honours of burial in sacred tombs.[238.3] The native
tribes of Manipur lay a _genna_, or taboo, upon the inmates of a house
in which an animal dies or has young, especially a cow; and when a cat
dies it is wrapped up in a cloth and buried amid lamentations in a
grave dug for it by the old women.[238.4] To the Ibo-speaking peoples
of Nigeria the leopard is a quasi-sacred animal. At Aguku the hunter
who has killed it puts eagle-feathers in his hair and does no work for
twenty-eight days: that is to say, he is under a taboo for a whole
moon. At Ugwoba he may not go to {239} the Aǰana (the shrine of the
earth) for a year; he must sit down without working for twenty-eight
days, and may eat only such food as has been put in a pot and hung
over the fire; he sleeps in a good house, and people watch lest other
leopards come and kill him. On the twenty-eighth day, on taking the
skin to market, sacrifices are offered to a certain tree, which is
regarded as _ekwensu_, defined as the spirit of a man who has been
killed with a rope or a knife, or of a woman who has died in
pregnancy.[239.1] Such a death would be an evil death, and the ghost
would be naturally inclined to make others suffer in the same way; but
the sacrifices would perhaps conciliate him and induce him to turn his
attention to an effectual protection of the sacrificer against the
leopards’ vengeance.
Among the Herero of German South-West Africa to shed the blood of a
lion is the same as to shed that of a human being; and he who kills a
lion can only wash away the sin by the shedding of his own blood. This
is done by scoring his breast and arm with a flint and dropping some
of the blood upon the earth.[239.2] The Hidatsa of the North American
prairies, after hunting eagles, build a sweat-lodge and purify
themselves, singing a mystery-song or incantation.[239.3] The
practice, in fact, is widespread. In some instances it may be
explained by totemism or analogous beliefs. In any case there can be
no doubt it is dictated by similar motives to those that lead to the
taboo and mourning after the death of a human being.
The suggestion has been made that the change of {240} garb is intended
as a disguise to deceive the spirit of the deceased, and so to shelter
the mourner from its attacks. On the one hand, many tribes
unquestionably adopt the same costume after killing an enemy as on the
death of a friend. Among the Abarambos of Welle in the French Soudan,
when a native kills another he blackens his face, girds himself with a
grass cord and eats only raw bananas, to hinder the ghost from coming
to kill him in his turn. The same rites are observed on the death of a
husband or wife, with the addition that the survivor disappears for a
time into the woods.[240.1]
But this is by no means the universal rule. Among the Nandi of East
Africa the killing of an enemy entails quite a different garb from the
death of a friend. “When a married man dies, his widows and unmarried
daughters lay aside all their ornaments, and the eldest son wears his
garment inside out”; and more or less shaving, according to their
nearness in blood, is done by all the relatives. “On the death of a
married woman her youngest daughter wears her garment inside out,
whilst her other relations put rope on their ornaments [to hide them,
a common practice where they cannot easily be taken off] and shave
their heads. In the case of unmarried people the female relations
cover their ornaments with rope, and the male relations shave their
heads.” The killing of a Nandi, so far as appears, does not entail a
change of costume, at least if the homicide belong to a different clan
from his victim. It is merely the subject of vengeance, unless bought
off by blood-money. Curiously enough, it does not even seem to render
the guilty man “unclean,” as the killing of a member of his own {241}
clan does. The latter indeed renders him “unclean for the rest of his
life, unless he can succeed in killing two other Nandi of a different
clan, and can pay the fine himself.” In the meantime, for aught that
appears in Mr Hollis’ careful account of the Nandi, no change of
costume is necessary beyond what other members of the clan must
undergo on the death of a relation. The killing of a person belonging
to another tribe--a person who is not a Nandi,--however, entails a
stringent condition of taboo, yet it is a subject, not of blame like
the killing of a Nandi, but of praise. The slayer “paints one side of
his body, spear and sword red, and the other side white. For four days
after the murder he is considered unclean, and may not go home. He has
to build a small shelter by a river and live there; he must not
associate with his wife or sweetheart, and he may only eat porridge,
beef, and goat’s flesh. At the end of the fourth day he must purify
himself by drinking a strong purge made from the bark of the
segetet-tree, and by drinking goat’s milk mixed with bullock’s
blood.”[241.1]
Other tribes in the east of Africa paint the man-killer. Masai
warriors (from whom possibly the Nandi have taken over the custom),
after returning victorious, paint the body in the manner just
described.[241.2] Among the Borâna Galla, the conquerors who have
slain an enemy, on returning, are washed by the women with a mixture
of fat and milk, and their faces are painted red and white. After
dirges over those who have fallen, the praises of the surviving heroes
are sung, and the young warriors’ trophies are publicly buried outside
the village. These trophies are portions of the bodies {242} of the
slaughtered foes which cannot be conveniently preserved.[242.1] The
washing is obviously a ceremonial purification. Apart from this the
entire proceeding is one of triumph, and there is no indication of an
attempt at concealment. In the Congo basin the Yaka warrior who kills
a man in battle incurs the danger of reprisals on the part of the
ghost. He can, however, escape by wearing the red tail-feathers of the
parrot in his hair and painting his forehead red. Upon this it is to
be observed that, as elsewhere, red is a favourite colour among the
Bayaka. It is used for body-painting of both living and dead. The
corpse is painted before burial; the dandy paints himself to increase
his beauty; the widow is painted in mourning. The painting of the
forehead can therefore hardly be a disguise. The tail-feathers of the
parrot are probably an amulet.[242.2]
The Lillooet or the Ntlakapamux warrior of British Columbia who has
slain a foe paints not merely his forehead but his entire face black.
If he did not do so, it was believed that he would become blind; and
in the case of the latter tribe we are told that “the spirit of {243}
the victim would cause him to become blind.” Blindness for some reason
is dreaded by these tribes after other deaths. Among the Lillooet a
widower cuts his hair very short above his eyes and ears; “for if his
hair touched the eyes he would become blind.” The cutting of the hair
is, of course, a very common rite either in or at the conclusion of
mourning. Among the Ntlakapamux, widows and widowers “rubbed four
times across their eyes a small smooth stone taken from beneath
running water, and then threw it away, praying that they might not
become blind.”[243.1] Since widows and widowers are specially subject
to the persecution of the deceased spouse, we may perhaps infer that
the blindness in such cases would be attributable to the departed. A
parity of reasoning would lead to the same conclusion in regard to the
warrior’s victim. But how the painting of the face black would prevent
such a catastrophe we are in the dark. For aught we know, it may have
been (for instance) an expression of contrition designed to mollify
the injured ghost. Mortuary ceremonies are almost everywhere so
complicated that it is difficult to disentangle their motives. In the
related tribe of the Skqomic all who follow the corpse in the burial
procession must paint the breasts of their garments with red paint,
else “a scarcity of fish would be the result at the next salmon run”;
and the widow in addition is painted with red streaks on the crown of
her head.[243.2] The fact is that painting oneself is a preparation
for the footlights by no means confined to over-civilized peoples. It
is so usual in the most varied stages of culture, from the lowest
upwards, that we cannot safely pronounce it an attempt at disguise.
{244}
A somewhat stronger case might perhaps be made for the garb of a
company of Dyak head-hunters, if we could be sure that the ceremonies
as described a few years ago by an eyewitness at the settlement of
Tandjoeng-Karang, on the river Kapoeas, were intact. But when a rite
is in decay, as head-hunting is, all sorts of variations are possible.
The British and Dutch governments, now supreme in Borneo, with little
regard for the most sacred feelings of their heathen subjects,
positively forbid a custom intended to procure blessings for the
community by the conversion of ancient foes into guardian spirits.
Hence it is often necessary, instead of taking fresh heads, to put up
with old ones and to make believe that they are new. For this purpose
an expedition is sent forth on a mock-raid, carrying skulls of former
victims with them, and bringing them back as if they were just
acquired. When the expedition returns, it is received as if it were a
successful war-party, and the ceremonies on the arrival of genuine
head-hunters are performed. At Tandjoeng-Karang, on the occasion in
question, these included dances in which both men and women took part.
The men (who had been fasting, and were still under taboo) were clad
in war-apparel. Skins of animals hung from their shoulders; feathers
adorned their caps; and all wore on their wrists, arms and legs
ornaments of withered palm-leaves, such as are distinctive of
successful raiders. In addition, some had also shaved the front of the
head and decked it with similar wreaths, so that the leaves hung down
like fringes over the face. If this were intended as a disguise, it is
curious that not all the raiders were thus shaven. Whether there was
any reason why all did not share in this treatment of the head, or
indeed what the palm-leaf ornament signified, it was not possible to
ascertain. The observer was assured, however, {245} that the shaving
was necessary in order to bring the fast to an end, and that in former
days the shorn hair was thrown into the water with invocations to the
spirits. Now it lay neglected where it fell. The day was concluded
with feasting and further dances; but the men were not yet entirely
relieved from their taboo. This was accomplished early the next
morning with a bath in the river; and the slaughter of hogs and
another feast brought the solemnity to a close.[245.1]
On the other hand, all supernatural beings are deceived and tricked
with what are to us very transparent devices. The standard of
intellect in the other world would seem to be much lower than in this.
Even the spirits of Shakespeare and Milton, when conjured up in a
spiritualistic _séance_, are found stripped of all their supreme
qualities, and hardly the equals of the silly persons who have flocked
to their manifestations. In Borneo it is recorded that “some Madang [a
sub-tribe of the Kenyahs], who had crossed over from the Baram to the
Rejang on a visit, appeared each with a cross marked in charcoal on
his forehead. They supposed that by this means they were disguised
beyond all recognition by evil spirits.” And Tama Bulan, a Kenyah
chief, when on a visit to Kuching, discarded for the same reason the
leopard’s teeth which he habitually wore at home through the upper
part of his ears.[245.2] In the same island also the Kayans protect a
child from an evil-disposed Toh, or inferior spirit, by a sooty mark
on the forehead, consisting of a vertical median line and a horizontal
band above the eyebrows, which is thought to render it difficult for
the Toh to recognize his victim.[245.3]
{246}
This facility of deception, it may be observed, extends to other
senses than that of sight. It is accountable for the taboo of words
and the use of euphemisms in hunting and on other occasions. The poor
silly spirits will not be able to penetrate the disguise. In the
north-east of Scotland the fishermen when at sea never pronounced the
words _minister_, _kirk_, _swine_, _salmon_, _trout_, _dog_, and so
on, but used other words or phrases instead, such as “bell-hoose” for
_kirk_, or “the man wi’ the black quyte” for _minister_.[246.1] The
people of Mulera-Ruanda in German East Africa have a definite theory
to account for such a practice. They hold that the spirits have indeed
ears and can hear what is said, but they have no eyes. Consequently
when a householder proposes on some solemn occasion, as a betrothal,
to sacrifice an animal, he directs the slave to go to the hill and
fetch the thickest sweet potato for a feast, meaning a fat goat from
the herd. This goat he then offers to his ancestors, calling it an ox;
for the spirits will not be able to detect the cheat.[246.2] Like
Isaac in the Hebrew story, they are blind, and “what the eye doesn’t
see, the heart doesn’t grieve at,” as our English proverb has it: they
can be thus deceived into giving their blessing in return for a
trifling gratification.
Yet it may be doubted whether the cases alleged by Professor Frazer in
the important paper to which reference has been made, as favouring the
opinion that mourning clothes are a disguise, are not susceptible of a
different interpretation. So inconclusive did he himself think the
evidence that he refrained from definitely committing himself to the
opinion in question, though others have since done so. The custom of
painting the face and body in mourning is so common that it is at
least remarkable that the tribes of Borneo, who disguise {247}
themselves, as we have seen, from hostile spirits with charcoal, do
not seem to attempt this defence against the peevish ghost of a newly
deceased person. They content themselves with wearing bark-cloth or
clothes stained yellow with clay, with allowing the hair to grow where
it is usually shaved, or shaving it where it usually grows, and with
laying aside personal ornaments or substituting for the metal earrings
commonly worn by the women a wooden makeshift.[247.1] In this way
they may be said to conform to the rule already discussed of reversing
the ordinary costume.
A Bohemian custom required the mourners to put on masks and to
practise strange behaviour on their return from the funeral. It may be
conjectured that this was a dance or devil-drive, intended to expel,
not to deceive. Such dances are not uncommon, both at periodical
purification ceremonies[247.2] and on the occasion of a death. The
use of masks at funeral dances of this kind has been reported, for
example, in recent years among the Bantu-speaking peoples of the
prairie-land in the interior of the Kamerun. At these dances wooden
masks in the likeness of lower animals as well as of human beings are
worn; and two of the latter, hideous enough to horrify any respectable
ghost, are figured by the German explorer who discovered them.[247.3]
More recently another German explorer has found, on the Upper Aiary in
the interior of Brazil, mourning-dances of a similar character, in
which masks were used representing various animals and demons, and has
given figures from photographs of the dancers, as well as a lively
description of one of the dances which he witnessed. This dance began
with an attack on the {248} Maloka, or community-house, by a troop of
evil spirits, who eventually succeeded in storming it. The mother and
widow of the dead man wailed. The attacking party, having forced an
entrance, sang. The women were terrified, but the scene ended in
weeping and laughter. It was followed by dances and songs by the
various animals; and the performance was concluded by a phallic
dance--a pantomime of the process of reproduction. The meaning of the
masque, the explorer declares, was clear. It was a magic ritual
intended to propitiate the angry ghost of the deceased, that he might
not return and carry off any of the survivors. The evil demons, to
whose charge perhaps the death was laid, and from whose spite mankind
is never safe, would by the performance be hindered from further
mischief. Mákukö (the forest-demon) and the jaguar, foes of the
hunter, the spoilers of the crops (worms, larvæ, and other vermin),
and likewise the game itself were meant, by the mimicry of their
various proceedings, to be magically influenced and rendered
favourable to men, so that rich booty, large harvests, and every sort
of fertility and blessing would result.[248.1]
If it be objected that a mask is by its very nature intended to
deceive, we must not forget that that is very often not its primary
object. A nurse in play with a child will sometimes put on a mask for
an instant. She does so not to deceive the child as to her identity,
but to cause a momentary terror. So the horrible distortions of the
human countenance, the wild, the grotesque, the impossible mingling of
human and bestial features characteristic of many of the masks used in
these dances, are often intended rather to terrify than to deceive the
supernatural beings against whom the performance is directed. {249} A
warrior going to battle decks himself out with paint and feathers,
with helmet and grinning crest, in order to strike fear into the heart
of his foe. Spirits are as easily frightened as human beings. Indeed,
happily for the comfort of mankind, they are possessed of uncommonly
weak nerves which fail them, with all their malevolence, at every
turn. All that is necessary is for the man who knows how to deal with
them to put on a bold front, and they will flee before him.
Professor de Groot, writing of the war against spectres in China,
says: “A courageous man while boldly fighting, or trying to terrify by
aggressive gestures, easily gets his hair disordered. Therefore
flowing hair intimates intrepidity, and cannot fail to inspire the
spectral world with fear.… This idea has not only formed the text of
old traditions, but as early as the Han dynasty had created the custom
of setting up long-haired heads, in order to drive away spectres. No
wonder that to this day long-haired exorcists assuming this terrifying
aspect, and enhancing it by weapons brandished with vigour, are
everyday appearances also in spectre-expelling processions.
Accoutrements,” he goes on to say, “have been worn with the same
object since early times. Before the Christian era, the _fang-siang_,
while purifying grave-pits, houses, and streets, were dressed with
bearskins and masked with grotesque caps; and under the Han dynasty
persons masked as animals, feathered, haired and horned, accompanied
them in exorcising processions, jumping about and screaming. Probably
such exorcists have appeared in all ages at funerals. Even to this
day… _fang-siang_ are seen therein in the shape of
effigies.”[249.1]
But masked personages in many mourning-dances represent the ghosts
themselves. In the islands of Torres {250} Straits, for example, such
representations are an indispensable part of the funeral ceremonies,
and the identity of the ghost is “indicated by a pantomimic
representation of characteristic traits of the deceased. The idea,”
says Dr Haddon, “evidently was to convey to the mourners the assurance
that the ghost was alive and that in the person of the dancer he
visited his friends; the assurance of his life after death comforted
the bereaved ones.”[250.1] The identification of the performer with
the deceased is among some peoples complete. Thirty days after the
death of an adult Musquakie Indian the dead man is personated by a
friend, who in this character attends a farewell feast preparatory to
the final departure of the ghost for the Happy Hunting Grounds. He is
called the ghost-carrier. When the sun goes down he departs toward the
west, convoyed by a number of the friends of the deceased, all of
whom, like himself, are painted but not masked. After nightfall they
return and are welcomed as from a long journey. The ghost-carrier is
by everyone addressed by the name of the deceased. In a few days he
visits the parents of the deceased, if they survive, announcing
himself as their dead son, who would care for them in their old age.
He is henceforth looked upon as their son, called by that son’s name,
and pledged to a son’s duty to them, though his own parents do not
necessarily give him up and still call him by his own name. Similar
ceremonies are performed for women by women.[250.2] In fact the
performer who represents a supernatural being in a religious dance of
any kind is quite commonly regarded not as a representative, but as
the supernatural personage himself, so long as he wears the mask and
bears his attributes. So an author already quoted, writing of the
{251} Indians of North-Western Brazil, says: “The demon is involved in
the mask, is incorporated in it; the mask is for the Indian the demon
himself.… The demon of the mask passes over into the masquer for the
time being.”[251.1] The masked dances of these Indians are performed
especially in honour of the dead. The masks therefore are intended to
deceive nobody, not even the recently deceased, who as a new arrival
in the other world may be “a babe in these things.” The masquers are
the demons _in propriis personis_ without any deceit.
A different case is that of a Myoro woman cited by Dr Frazer from
Captain Speke’s _Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile_.
Her child had died. She smeared herself with butter and ashes and ran
frantically about, “while the men abused her in foul language for the
express purpose of frightening away the demons” who had carried off
her child. And Dr Frazer asks: “If curses are meant to frighten, are
not the ashes meant to deceive the demon?”[251.2] From the
description of the scene, however, it seems probable that the demon
was conceived as actually in possession of the woman, and that it was
intended to drive him out of her. In that event again there would be
no deception of the demon--it was open war; while the ashes may be
referable to quite another cause, as will be suggested below.
A third possible example is the custom in Calabria, whereby the women
cease wailing at night and put off the black veils they donned at the
moment of death.[251.3] Here it may be, as Professor Frazer suggests,
a sufficient explanation that disguise is superfluous in the dark. The
custom of wearing veils or hoods to conceal the face in {252} mourning
is not confined to Europe, though widely spread there. The “weepers”
and other crape trappings still in use in France, but for the most
part abandoned in this country, are probably relics of it. It is found
among nations sundered as far as the Eskimo on the shores of the
frozen ocean from the tribes of the Eastern Archipelago and Melanesia.
The veil is sometimes worn without intermission. Among the Minuanes of
South America the widow carefully covers her face with her hair,
notwithstanding she remains for several days in the hut.[252.1] About
Bering Strait the housemates of a deceased Eskimo must remain in their
accustomed places in the house during the four days following the
death, while the ghost is believed to be still about. During this time
all of them must keep their fur hoods drawn over their heads, not to
deceive the dead man, but “to prevent the influence of the shade from
entering their heads and killing them.”[252.2] Where the mourners are
confined more or less to the house, however, the custom of veiling is
often, perhaps usually, more stringent on going out of doors than when
they are inside in the dark. In the lower culture the women at least
are frequently confined to the house, and only go out in case of
necessity at night, or at early morning and evening to weep at the
grave. But the Calabrian women would more naturally go out of doors,
if at all, by day; hence they would be more closely veiled by day; and
at night, when they would not go out, they might wear their ordinary
head-dress of a white handkerchief. It is at least curious that they
themselves assume that they would be recognized at night through the
disguise by “_il demonio_,” who has doubtless succeeded to the
pre-Christian terrors of the other world; and they declare it is lest
he should rejoice {253} over their sorrow--to deceive him as to that,
and not as to their identity--that they doff the discomfort of the
veil. For the same reason they take the opportunity to suspend their
wailing, which to be sure is not as a rule anywhere absolutely
continuous: human nature could not endure it.
Taboo is the most contagious of diseases. Mourning garb is its outward
and visible sign, and a warning to all who would otherwise come into
contact with the mourner. The veil in particular may be compared with
the head-coverings and seclusion required of girls arriving at
maturity. At that period they also are under taboo. Among the Eskimo,
the tribes of British Columbia, many of the South American tribes and
the Bantu tribes of Africa, and over a considerable area in the south
of Asia, the Indian Ocean and Melanesia, adolescent girls are confined
for a longer or shorter time where they cannot be seen, or kept
covered if they go out of doors. They are very sensitive to the
influence of the sun.[253.1] But it is not merely that the sun would
affect them; their very glance is deleterious. A Thlinkit girl wears a
hat with long flaps, that her glance may not pollute the sky. Among
the Tsetsaut it is believed that if she were to expose her face to the
sun or the sky, rain would fall.[253.2] So the Hupa grave-digger in
California is under a taboo. He has come into contact with death, and
is required after the funeral to carry a bough of Douglas spruce over
his head, “that he may not by any chance glance at the sky or at any
human being, thereby contaminating them.”[253.3] On the island of
Mabuiag, if a maturing girl’s own father see her, he will have bad
luck in fishing, and probably {254} smash his canoe the next time he
goes in it.[254.1] So far as I am aware, there is no intention in
veiling a girl at puberty to disguise her so as to delude any
spiritual foe. It is true that both she and the mourners at a death
(including all who take part in the death-rites) are exposed to
special dangers. That is because they are alike in a state of taboo.
They are thus also dangerous to others. They must be secluded; or if
they venture abroad they must be either covered or so garbed as to
keep other persons at a distance.
That the same reasons apply, at all events among some tribes, to the
veiling of the faces of widows and widowers appears from the customs
of the Lkungen of Vancouver Island. After a burial “the whole tribe go
down to the sea, wash their heads, bathe, and cut their hair. The
nearer related a person is to the deceased, the shorter he cuts his
hair. Those who do not belong to the deceased’s family merely clip the
ends of their hair.… Widow and widower, after the death of wife or
husband, are forbidden to cut their hair, as they would gain too great
power over the souls and the welfare of others. They must remain alone
at their fire for a long time, and are forbidden to mingle with other
people. When they eat, nobody must see them. They must keep their
faces covered for ten days. They fast for two days after burial and
are not allowed to speak. After two days they may speak a little; but
before addressing anyone they must go into the woods and clean
themselves in ponds and with cedar-branches. If they wish to harm an
enemy they call his name when taking their first meal after the fast,
and bite very hard in eating. It is believed that this will kill him.
They must not go near the water, or eat fresh salmon, as the latter
might be driven away. {255} They must not eat warm food, else their
teeth would fall out.”[255.1] This account shows that the widow or
widower is dangerous to other people, and consequently in a state of
taboo. It further shows that the fast and privation of society and
comfort that such a mourner undergoes materially increase his
_orenda_, giving him power to kill his enemy by sympathetic magic, or
even rendering him a peril to his own community if he add to the
severity of his penance by cutting his hair, as a mourner who is not
so nearly related to the deceased does. All this is in accord with the
principles underlying the taboo and fast of girls and boys at puberty.
There can be very little doubt that it is dictated by similar motives.
If so, the covering of the face is, here at least, not intended to
disguise the mourner and conceal him from the ghost. It is an integral
portion of his taboo. It helps to safeguard the well-being of the
surviving members of his community, and to make his own _orenda_ more
powerful.
It is no part of my case to deny that mourning garb is ever intended
to deceive the ghost. Customs differ so much in different cultural
areas that it is quite possible there may be some instances in which
the intention is to disguise the mourner by way of precaution against
the deceased. Professor Frazer has brought forward two cases, and only
two, so far as I am aware, in which this object is avowed. The first
is found in the western districts of the island of Timor. When a man
dies and before his body is put into a coffin, his wives stand weeping
over it with their village gossips, “all with loosened hair, in order
to make themselves unrecognizable by the _nitu_ (spirit) of the
dead.”[255.2] I have not seen the authority {256} he cites; therefore
I do not know whether we are given any information how a widow in
these districts habitually wears her hair. For aught that appears
here, the hair is loosened only for this ceremony, which comes to an
end with the enclosure of the corpse in the coffin, and may not last
for more than an hour or two. If so, whatever be the reason for
hindering the ghost from identifying the participants, the loosening
of the hair may not be, strictly speaking, part of the mourning garb.
The other case is a practice occasionally in use among the Herero.
When a dying man intimates to one of his relatives and friends, who
crowd around him at such a time, that he has “decided upon taking him
away after his death,” that is to say, that he will kill him (fetch
him to the other world), the person so threatened has recourse to an
_onganga_, or witch-doctor. This functionary strips him, washes and
greases him afresh, and dresses him in other clothes. “He is now quite
at his ease about the threatening of death caused by the deceased;
for, says he: ‘Now, our father does not know me.’” The survivors,
however, may fulfil the threat.[256.1] This certainly does appear to
be a case of disguise, or at least a change of clothes in order to
deceive the deceased; but the substituted clothes do not appear to be
mourning garb, and the problem of mourning garb is what we are
endeavouring to solve.
That protection is needed against the ghost of the recently dead is
clear. All over the world there is fear of ghosts. Protection,
however, is not commonly sought in disguise, even in extreme cases. It
is frequently sought, as against other supernatural foes, in fire. The
custom is so well known that it need not now detain us.[256.2] {257}
The Ewhe widow provides herself with a club, burns pungent powders and
takes other precautions from assault, or even approach, by the
deceased. A widower does the same. In both cases the event to be
dreaded is the attempt by the deceased to renew conjugal relations.
This danger assumes recognition by the ghost. So far from seeking to
elude it, she goes entirely naked. The lot, whether of widow or
widower, is not happy, though here, as elsewhere, the woman gets the
worst of it: she must be defended for six weeks, while seven or eight
days suffice for him.[257.1] The Charrua mourner in South America
went forth into the wilderness armed with a stick.[257.2] The Eskimo
of Bering Strait indeed wear fur hoods, but, as we have seen, they are
a direct defence against the penetrative influence of the ghost, not a
disguise. The Koryak, the Timorlaut islanders, the Ngoulango of the
Ivory Coast seek refuge in a talisman or amulet.[257.3]
The amulet preserved by the son of the deceased Timorlaut islander is
a piece of his father’s nail. According to the rules of sympathetic
magic he preserves in this way his corporal union with the deceased,
and thereby ensures his protection. The widow or widower does not take
a portion of the body, but wears a piece of the clothing. This
obviously is intended to have the same effect. The practice is not
unknown elsewhere. In Syria when a man dies his wife puts on one of
his garments and sings funeral songs.[257.4] Dr Junker relates that
he witnessed the ceremonies on the death of the ruler of Kabajendi,
who had lived almost all his life {258} among the A-sande and was
mourned according to their rites. His wives, after wailing beside the
coffin, marched through the zeriba and pretended to search in every
hole and corner, crying out to him, creeping in and out on hands and
knees under the overhanging thatch of the roofs, then gathering and
starting again on further explorations, all the while howling,
shrieking, and lamenting. The next morning those of them who could
manage to possess themselves of any article of his clothing put it on,
marching round the village thus attired in a continual procession or
dance, while others carried sword, lances, clubs, climbing plants,
maize-cobs, and so forth, their heads strewn with ashes. This
performance lasted for a fortnight, despite the tropical rain.[258.1]
Some light on this fantastic promenade may be thrown by the
proceedings of the Bangala women. In the Boloki district, “when a man
of any position died his wives would throw off their dresses and wear
old rags (sometimes they would go absolutely naked), pick up anything
belonging to him--his chair, spear, pipe, mug, knife, shield or
blanket--anything that came first to hand; and having covered their
bodies with a coating of clay, they would parade the town in ones, or
twos, or threes, crying bitterly and calling upon him to return to
them. They would stop at times in their crying and say: ‘He is gone to
So-and-so; we will go and find him’; and away they would start off in
a business-like fashion in their pretended search for him. This
parading they would keep up for a day or two, and then women of the
town would bedeck themselves with climbing plants, vines, {259}
leaves, and bunches of twigs; and, forming themselves into a
procession, they would march through the town chanting the praises of
the deceased. Men would paint and arm themselves as for a fight, and
would imitate the daring acts of the departed as a warrior; and if he
had been remarkable for fighting on the river, they would arrange a
sham canoe-fight in his honour.… It was an amusing and interesting
sight, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoyed both by actors and
spectators alike. They called this praising or honouring the
dead.”[259.1]
It has been suggested that the wearing of a portion of the clothing of
the dead is intended to delude him into the belief that those who do
so are themselves dead, and so to turn aside his attack.[259.2] No
proof, so far as I am aware, has been offered for the suggestion.
Whatever the exact intention of the A-sande rite (and its equivalence
with the Boloki rite is obvious), it can hardly be tortured into this.
The ghost must be stupid indeed who cannot distinguish his own
clothing and personal chattels when carried about by his wives. To
wear the clothing of the deceased identifies the mourner with him,
sometimes for the purpose of protection by means of sympathetic magic,
sometimes for the presentation of the dead man in funeral ceremonies
like those of the Torres Straits islanders or the Musquakie
Indians.[259.3] Where this is not the object, to put on his coat and
to carry his mug or his spear in procession may be due, as it seems to
be here, to some vague idea of honouring him, or perhaps of inducing
him to return. The supposition that it is intended to deceive the
ghost may be safely discarded.
In more general terms it has been conjectured that {260} mourning
rites are intended to express union with the departed by obligatory,
if partial, participation of his state, that by virtue of the
contagion of death the mourners have become really changed and are for
a time as if they were dead, hence they must eat, clothe, and conduct
themselves as far as possible like the dead.[260.1] Lastly, it has
been pointed out that many of the observances imposed on mourners are
a return to more primitive and savage conditions--such as sitting on
the bare earth, going naked or wearing only the roughest and coarsest
stuffs, and abstaining from good food in favour of wild berries and
roots;--and the question has been put whether this may not be the
essence of mourning.[260.2] There is probably some measure of truth
in both these suggestions; but they must not be pressed too far. Many
of the rites and usages are intended beyond question to express
sympathy for the deceased, and a temporary segregation with him from
ordinary life.