the spirits of their ancestors, chiefly on occasions of sickness.[604]
Again, the people of Vaté or Efat, another of the New Hebrides,
worshipped the souls of their forefathers and prayed to them over the
_kava_-bowl for health and prosperity.[605] As an example of prayers
offered to the dead we may take the petition which the natives of
Florida put up at sea to Daula, a well-known ghost, who is associated
with the frigate-bird. They say: "Do thou draw the canoe, that it may
reach the land; speed my canoe, grandfather, that I may quickly reach
the shore whither I am bound. Do thou, Daula, lighten the canoe, that it
may quickly gain the land and rise upon the shore." They also invoke
Daula to help them in fishing. "If thou art powerful, O Daula," they
say, "put a fish or two into this net and let them die there." After a
good catch they praise him, saying, "Powerful is the ghost of the net."
And when the natives of Florida are in danger on the sea, they call upon
their immediate forefathers; one will call on his grandfather, another
on his father, another on some dead friend, calling with reverence and
saying, "Save us on the deep! Save us from the tempest! Bring us to the
shore!" In San Cristoval people apply to ghosts for victory in battle,
health in sickness, and good crops; but the word which they use to
signify such an application conveys the notion of charm rather than of
prayer. However, in the Banks' Islands what may be called prayer is
strictly speaking an invocation of the dead; indeed the very word for
prayer (_tataro_) seems to be identical with that for a powerful ghost
(_'ataro_ in San Cristoval). A man in peril on the sea will call on his
dead friends, especially on one who was in his lifetime a good sailor.
And in Mota, when an oven is opened, they throw in a leaf of cooked
mallow for a ghost, saying to him, "This is a lucky bit for your eating;
they who have charmed your food or clubbed you (as the case may be),
take hold of their hands, drag them away to hell, let them be dead." So
when they pour water on the oven, they pray to the ghost, saying, "Pour
it on the head of him down there who has laid plots against me, has
clubbed me, has shot me, has stolen things of mine (as the case may be),
he shall die." Again, when they make a libation before drinking, they
pray, saying, "Grandfather! this is your lucky drop of kava; let boars
come in to me; the money I have spent, let it come back to me; the food
that is gone, let it come back hither to the house of you and me." And
on starting for a voyage they will say, "Uncle! father! plenty of boars
for you, plenty of money; kava for your drinking, lucky food for your
eating in the canoe. I pray you with this, look down upon me, let me go
on a safe sea." Or when the canoe labours with a heavy freight, they
will pray, "Take off your burden from us, that we may speed on a safe
sea."[606]
[Sidenote: Sanctuaries of ghosts in Florida.]
In the island of Florida, the sanctuary of a powerful ghost is called a
_vunuhu_. Sometimes it is in the village, sometimes in the
garden-ground, sometimes in the forest. If it is in the village, it is
fenced about, lest the foot of any rash intruder should infringe its
sanctity. Sometimes the sanctuary is the place where the dead man is
buried; sometimes it merely contains his relics, which have been
translated thither. In some sanctuaries there is a shrine and in some an
image. Generally, if not always, stones may be seen lying in such a holy
place. The sight of one of them has probably struck the fancy of the man
who founded the worship; he thought it a likely place for the ghost to
haunt, and other smaller stones and shells have been subsequently added.
Once a sanctuary has been established, everything within it becomes
sacred (_tambu_) and belongs to the ghost. Were a tree growing within it
to fall across the path, nobody would step over it. When a sacrifice is
to be offered to the ghost on the holy ground, the man who knows the
ghost, and whose duty it is to perform the sacrifice, enters first and
all who attend him follow, treading in his footsteps. In going out no
one will look back, lest his soul should stay behind. No one would pass
such a sanctuary when the sun was so low as to cast his shadow into it;
for if he did the ghost would seize his shadow and so drag the man
himself into his den. If there were a shrine in the sanctuary, nobody
but the sacrificer might enter it. Such a shrine contained the weapons
and other properties which belonged in his lifetime to the man whose
ghost was worshipped on the spot.[607]
[Sidenote: Sanctuaries of ghosts in Malanta.]
At Saa in Malanta, another of the Solomon Islands, all burial-grounds
where common people are interred are so far sacred that no one will go
there without due cause; but places where the remains of nobles repose,
and where sacrifices are offered to their ghosts, are regarded with very
great respect, they may indeed be called family sanctuaries. Some of
them are very old, the powerful ghosts who are worshipped in them being
remote ancestors. It sometimes happens that the man who used to
sacrifice in such a place dies without having instructed his son in the
proper chant of invocation with which the worshipful ghost should be
approached. In such a case the young man who succeeds him may fear to go
to the old sanctuary, lest he should commit a mistake and offend the
ghost; so he will take some ashes from the old sacrificial fire-place
and found a new sanctuary. It is not common in that part of Malanta to
build shrines for the relics of the dead, but it is sometimes done. Such
shrines, on the other hand, are common in the villages of San Cristoval
and in the sacred places of that island where great men lie buried. To
trespass on them would be likely to rouse the anger of the ghosts, some
of whom are known to be of a malignant disposition.[608]
[Sidenote: Sanctuaries which are not burial-grounds.]
But burial-grounds are not the only sanctuaries in the Solomon Islands.
There are some where no dead man is known to be interred, though in Dr.
Codrington's opinion there are probably none which do not derive their
sanctity from the presence of a ghost. In the island of Florida the
appearance of something wonderful will cause any place to become a
sanctuary, the wonder being accepted as proof of a ghostly presence. For
example, in the forest near Olevuga a man planted some coco-nut and
almond trees and died not long afterwards. Then there appeared among the
trees a great rarity in the shape of a white cuscus. The people took it
for granted that the animal was the dead man's ghost, and therefore they
called it by his name. The place became a sanctuary; no one would gather
the coco-nuts and almonds that grew there, till two Christian converts
set the ghost at defiance and appropriated his garden, with the
coco-nuts and almonds. Through the same part of the forest ran a stream
full of eels, one of which was so big that the people were quite sure it
must be a ghost; so nobody would bathe in that stream or drink from it,
except at one pool, which for the sake of convenience was considered not
to be sacred. Again, in Bugotu, a district of Ysabel, which is another
of the Solomon Islands, there is a pool known to be the haunt of a very
old ghost. When a man has an enemy whom he wishes to harm he will obtain
some scraps of his food and throw them into the water. If the food is at
once devoured by the fish, which swarm in the pool, the man will die,
but otherwise his life may be saved by the intervention of a man who
knows the habits of the ghost and how to propitiate him. In these sacred
places there are stones, on which people place food in order to obtain
good crops, while for success in fishing they deposit morsels of cooked
fish. Such stones are treated with reverence and seem to be in a fair
way to develop into altars. However, when the old ghost is superseded,
as he often is, by younger rivals, the development of an altar out of
the stones is arrested.[609]
[Sidenote: Ghosts in animals, such as sharks, alligators, snakes,
bonitos, and frigate-birds.]
From some of these instances we learn that Melanesian ghosts can
sometimes take up their abode in animals, such as cuscuses, eels, and
fish. The creatures which are oftenest used as vehicles by the spirits
of the dead are sharks, alligators, snakes, bonitos, and frigate-birds.
Snakes which haunt a sacred place are themselves sacred, because they
belong to or actually embody the ghost. Sharks, again, in all these
islands are very often thought to be the abode of ghosts; for men before
their death will announce that they will appear as sharks, and
afterwards any shark remarkable for size or colour which haunts a
certain shore or coast is taken to be somebody's ghost and receives the
name of the deceased. At Saa certain food, such as coco-nuts from
particular trees, is reserved to feed such a ghost-shark; and men of
whom it is known for certain that they will be sharks after their death
are allowed to anticipate the posthumous honours which await them by
devouring such food in the sacred place, just as if they were real
sharks. Sharks are very commonly believed to be the abode of ghosts in
Florida and Ysabel, and in Savo, where they are particularly numerous;
hence, though all sharks are not venerated, there is no living creature
so commonly held sacred by the Central Melanesians as a shark; and
shark-ghosts seem even to form a class of powerful supernatural beings.
Again, when a lizard was seen frequenting a house after a death, it
would be taken for the ghost returning to its old home; and many ghosts,
powerful to aid the mariner at sea, take up their quarters in
frigate-birds.[610]
[Sidenote: The belief in ghosts underlies the Melanesian conception of
magic.]
Again, a belief in powerful ghosts underlies to a great extent the
Melanesian conception of magic, as that conception is expounded by Dr.
Codrington. "That invisible power," he tells us, "which is believed by
the natives to cause all such effects as transcend their conception of
the regular course of nature, and to reside in spiritual beings, whether
in the spiritual part of living men or in the ghosts of the dead, being
imparted by them to their names and to various things that belong to
them, such as stones, snakes, and indeed objects of all sorts, is that
generally known as _mana_. Without some understanding of this it is
impossible to understand the religious beliefs and practices of the
Melanesians; and this again is the active force in all they do and
believe to be done in magic, white or black. By means of this men are
able to control or direct the forces of nature, to make rain or
sunshine, wind or calm, to cause sickness or remove it, to know what is
far off in time and space, to bring good luck and prosperity, or to
blast and curse. No man, however, has this power of his own; all that he
does is done by the aid of personal beings, ghosts or spirits."[611]
[Sidenote: Illness generally thought to be caused by ghosts.]
Thus, to begin with the medical profession, which is a branch of magic
long before it becomes a department of science, every serious sickness
is believed to be brought about by ghosts or spirits, but generally it
is to the ghosts of the dead that illness is ascribed both by the
Eastern and by the Western islanders. Hence recourse is had to ghosts
for aid both in causing and in curing sickness. They are thought to
inflict disease, not only because some offence, such as trespass, has
been committed against them, or because one who knows their ways has
instigated them thereto by sacrifice and spells, but because there is a
certain malignity in the feeling of all ghosts towards the living, who
offend them simply by being alive. All human faculties, apart from the
mere bodily functions, are supposed to be enhanced by death; hence the
ghost of a powerful and ill-natured man is only too ready to take
advantage of his increased powers for mischief.[612] Thus in the island
of Florida illness is regularly laid at the door of a ghost; the only
question that can arise is which particular ghost is doing the mischief.
Sometimes the patient imagines that he has offended his dead father,
uncle, or brother, who accordingly takes his revenge by stretching him
on a bed of sickness. In that case no special intercessor is required;
the patient himself or one of his kinsfolk will sacrifice and beg the
ghost to take the sickness away; it is purely a family affair. Sometimes
the sick man thinks that it is his own private or tame ghost who is
afflicting him; so he will leave the house in order to escape his
tormentor. But if the cause of sickness remains obscure, a professional
doctor or medicine-man will be consulted. He always knows, or at least
can ascertain, the ghost who is causing all the trouble, and he takes
his measures accordingly. Thus he will bind on the sick man the kind of
leaves that the ghost loves; he will chew ginger and blow it into the
patient's ears and on that part of the skull which is soft in infants;
he will call on the name of the ghost and entreat him to remove the
sickness. Should all these remedies prove vain, the doctor is by no
means at the end of his resources. He may shrewdly suspect that
somebody, who has an ill-will at the patient, has set his private ghost
to maul the sick man and do him a grievous bodily injury. If his
suspicions are confirmed and he discovers the malicious man who is
egging on the mischievous ghost, he will bribe him to call off his
ghost; and if the man refuses, the doctor will hire another ghost to
assault and batter the original assailant. At Wango in San Cristoval
regular battles used to be fought by the invisible champions above the
sickbed of the sufferer, whose life or death depended on the issue of
the combat. Their weapons were spears, and sometimes more than one ghost
would be engaged on either side.[613]
[Sidenote: Diagnosis of ghosts who have caused illness.]
In Ysabel the doctor employs an ingenious apparatus for discovering the
cause of sickness and ascertaining its cure. He suspends a stone at one
end of a string while he holds the other end in his hand. Then he
recites the names of all the people who died lately, and when the stone
swings at anybody's name, he knows that the ghost of that man has caused
the illness. It remains to find out what the ghost will take to relax
his clutch on the sick man, it may be a mash of yams, a fish, a pig, or
perhaps a human substitute. The question is put and answered as before;
and whatever the oracle declares to be requisite is offered on the dead
man's grave. Thus the ghost is appeased and the sufferer is made
whole.[614] In these islands a common cause of illness is believed to be
an unwarrantable intrusion on premises occupied by a ghost, who punishes
the trespasser by afflicting him with bodily pains and ailments, or it
may be by carrying off his soul. At Maewo in Aurora, one of the New
Hebrides, when there is reason to think that a sickness is due to
ghostly agency, the friends of the sick man send for a professional
dreamer, whose business it is to ascertain what particular ghost has
been offended and to make it up with him. So the dreamer falls asleep
and in his sleep he dreams a dream. He seems to himself to be in the
place where the patient was working before his illness; and there he
spies a queer little old man, who is really no other than the ghost. The
dreamer falls into conversation with him, learns his name, and winning
his confidence extracts from him a true account of the whole affair. The
fact is that in working at his garden the man encroached, whether
wittingly or not is no matter, on land which the ghost regards as his
private preserve; and to punish the intrusion the ghost carried off the
intruder's soul and impounded it in a magic fence in his garden, where
it still languishes in durance vile. The dreamer at once tenders a frank
and manly apology on behalf of his client; he assures the ghost that the
trespass was purely inadvertent, that no personal disrespect whatever
was intended, and he concludes by requesting the ghost to overlook the
offence for this time and to release the imprisoned soul. This appeal to
the better feelings of the ghost has its effect; he pulls up the fence
and lets the soul out of the pound; it flies back to the sick man, who
thereupon recovers. Sometimes an orphan child is made sick by its dead
mother, whose ghost draws away the soul of the infant to keep her
company in the spirit land. In such a case, again, a dreamer is employed
to bring back the lost soul from the far country; and if he can persuade
the mother's ghost to relinquish the tiny soul of her baby, the child
will be made whole.[615] Once more certain long stones in the Banks'
Islands are inhabited by ghosts so active and robust that if a man's
shadow so much as falls on one of them, the ghost in the stone will
clutch the shadow and pull the soul clean out of the man, who dies
accordingly. Such stones, dangerous as they unquestionably are to the
chance passer-by, nevertheless for that very reason possess a valuable
property which can be turned to excellent account. A man, for example,
will put one of these stones in his house to guard it like a watch-dog
in his absence; and if he sends a friend to fetch something out of it
which he has forgotten, the messenger, on approaching the house, will
take good care to call out the owner's name, lest the ghost in the
stone, mistaking him for a thief and a robber, should pounce out on him
and do him a mischief before he had time to explain.[616]
[Sidenote: Contrast between Melanesian and European medicine.]
Thus it appears that for a medical practitioner in Melanesia the first
requisite is an intimate acquaintance, not with the anatomy of the human
frame and the properties of drugs, but with ghosts, their personal
peculiarities, habits, and haunts. Only by means of the influence which
such a knowledge enables him to exert on these powerful and dangerous
beings can the good physician mitigate and assuage the sufferings of
poor humanity. His professional skill, while it certainly aims at the
alleviation of physical evils, attains its object chiefly, if not
exclusively, by a direct appeal to those higher, though invisible,
powers which encompass the life of man, or at all events of the
Melanesian. The firm faith in the spiritual and the unseen which these
sable doctors display in their treatment of the sick presents a striking
contrast to the procedure of their European colleagues, who trust
exclusively to the use of mere physical remedies, such as drugs and
lancets, now carving the body of the sufferer with knives, and now
inserting substances, about which they know little, into places about
which they know nothing. Has not science falsely so called still much to
learn from savagery?
[Sidenote: The weather believed to be regulated by ghosts and spirits.
Weather-doctors.]
But it is not the departments of medicine and surgery alone, important
as these are to human welfare, which in Melanesia are directed and
controlled by spiritual forces. The weather in those regions is also
regulated by ghosts and spirits. It is they who cause the wind to blow
or to be still, the sun to shine forth or to be overcast with clouds,
the rain to descend or the earth to be parched with drought; hence
fertility and abundance or dearth and famine prevail alternately at the
will of these spiritual directors. From this it follows that men who
stand on a footing of intimacy with ghosts and spirits can by judicious
management induce them to adapt the weather to the varying needs of
mankind. But it is to be observed that the supernatural beings, who are
the real sources of atmospheric phenomena, have delegated or deputed a
portion of their powers not merely to certain material objects, such as
stones or leaves, but to certain set forms of words, which men call
incantations or spells; and accordingly all such objects and formulas
do, by virtue of this delegation, possess in themselves a real and we
may almost say natural influence over the weather, which is often
manifested in a striking congruity or harmony between the things
themselves and the effects which they are calculated to produce. This
adaptation of means to end in nature may perhaps be regarded as a
beautiful proof of the existence of spirits and ghosts working their
purposes unseen behind the gaily coloured screen or curtain of the
physical universe. At all events men who are acquainted with the ghostly
properties of material objects and words can turn them to account for
the benefit of their friends and the confusion of their foes, and they
do so very readily if only it is made worth their while. Hence it comes
about that in these islands there are everywhere weather-doctors or
weather-mongers, who through their familiarity with ghosts and spirits
and their acquaintance with the ghostly or spiritual properties of
things, are able to control the weather and to supply their customers
with wind or calm, rain or sunshine, famine or abundance, at a
reasonable rate and a moderate figure.[617] The advantages of such a
system over our own blundering method of managing the weather, or rather
of leaving it to its own devices, are too obvious to be insisted on. To
take a few examples. In the island of Florida, when a calm is wanted,
the weather-doctor takes a bunch of leaves, of the sort which the ghost
loves, and hides the bunch in the hollow of a tree where there is water,
at the same time invoking the ghost with the proper charm. This
naturally produces rain and with the rain a calm. In the seafaring life
of the Solomon Islanders the maker of calms is a really valuable
citizen.[618] The Santa Cruz people are also great voyagers, and their
wizards control the weather on their expeditions, taking with them the
stock or log which represents their private or tame ghost and setting it
up on a stage in the cabin. The presence of the familiar ghost being
thus secured, the weather-doctor will undertake to provide wind or calm
according to circumstances.[619] We have already seen how in these
islands the wizard makes rain by pouring water on the wooden posts which
represent the rain-ghosts.[620]
[Sidenote: Black magic working through personal refuse or rubbish of the
victim.]
Such exercises of ghostly power for the healing of the sick and the
improvement of the weather are, when well directed and efficacious,
wholly beneficial. But ghostly power is a two-edged weapon which can
work evil as well as good to mankind. In fact it can serve the purpose
of witchcraft. The commonest application of this pernicious art is one
which is very familiar to witches and sorcerers in many parts of the
world. The first thing the wizard does is to obtain a fragment of food,
a bit of hair, a nail-clipping, or indeed anything that has been closely
connected with the person of his intended victim. This is the medium
through which the power of the ghost or spirit is brought to bear; it
is, so to say, the point of support on which the magician rests the
whole weight of his infernal engine. In order to give effect to the
charm it is very desirable, if not absolutely necessary, to possess some
personal relic, such as a bone, of the dead man whose ghost is to set
the machinery in motion. At all events the essential thing is to bring
together the man who is to be injured and the ghost or spirit who is to
injure him; and this can be done most readily by placing the personal
relics or refuse of the two men, the living and the dead, in contact
with each other; for thus the magic circuit, if we may say so, is
complete, and the fatal current flows from the dead to the living. That
is why it is most dangerous to leave any personal refuse or rubbish
lying about; you never can tell but that some sorcerer may get hold of
it and work your ruin by means of it. Hence the people are naturally
most careful to hide or destroy all such refuse in order to prevent it
from falling into the hands of witches and wizards; and this sage
precaution has led to habits of cleanliness which the superficial
European is apt to mistake for what he calls enlightened sanitation, but
which a deeper knowledge of native thought would reveal to him in their
true character as far-seeing measures designed to defeat the nefarious
art of the sorcerer.[621]
[Sidenote: Black magic working without any personal relic of the victim.
The ghost-shooter.]