deceased reluctant to believe that he can be dead, and which leads the negroes of the Loango Coast to try to induce him to eat, and makes them talk of his brave exploits, peradventure he may be beguiled into listening and returning, does not cease immediately, when it is ascertained that he is beyond doubt dead. "Thus we read of the Mandan women going year after year to take food to the skulls of their dead kinsfolk, and sitting by the hour to chat and jest in their most endearing strain with the relics of a husband or child; thus the Guinea negroes, who keep the bones of parents in chests, will go to talk with them in the little huts which serve for their tombs."1 We cannot doubt the affection with which the Hos invite the soul to return to them when the body has been burned "We never scolded you; never wronged you; Come to us back! We ever loved and cherished you; and have lived long together Desert it not now! The rainy nights, and the cold blowing days, are coming on; Do not wander here! Do not stand by the burnt ashes; come to us again! You cannot find shelter under the peepul, when the rain comes down. The soul will not shield you from the cold bitter wind. Come to your home! It is swept for you and clean; and we are there who loved you ever; And there is rice put for you; and water; Come home, come home, come to us again!" 2 3 The natural reluctance to believe that the beloved one has gone from us for ever does not among savages limit itself merely to poetical invitations to the spirit to return. In the Marian Isles a basket is provided in the house for the soul to rest in when it revisits its friends; and on the Congo the relatives abstain for a year from sweeping the house of the deceased, for fear they should unwittingly and involuntarily sweep out the soul. In Hawai, where ghosts usually go to the next world, the spirit of a dear friend dead may be detained by preserving his bones or clothes.5 The 1 Tylor, Prim. Cult. ii. 150; Catlin, N. A. Indians, i. 90; J. L. Wilson, W. Africa, 394. 2 Tylor, loc. cit. ii. 32. 4 Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 323. 3 Bastian, Oest. Asien, v. 83. 5 Bastian, Allerlei, i. 116. belief that the spirit is attached to his former earthly tenement is common enough, and indeed is a necessary outcome of a very natural association of ideas; a modern graveyard is the haunt of ghosts, though the soul is in the next world; in ancient Rome "Terra tegit carnem, tumulum circumvolat umbra 2 the Fantees believed that the ghost remains in the neighbourhood of the corpse;1 and this belief enables the savage to cheat his grief to some extent. In Fiji, "a child of rank died under the care of Marama, the queen of Somosomo. The body was placed in a box and hung from the tie-beam of the chief temple, and for some months the best of food was taken to it daily, the bearers approaching with the greatest respect, and, after having waited as long as a person would be in taking a meal, clapping their hands, as when a chief has done eating, and retiring." The persistence, even amongst savages, of natural affection when the object of affection is dead, may be further illustrated by a similar example from a different quarter of the globe: "When a child dies among the Ojibways, they cut some of its hair and make a little doll, which they call the doll of sorrow. This lifeless object takes the place of the deceased child. This the mother carries for a year. She places it near her at the fire, and sighs often when gazing on it. She carries it wherever she goes. They think the child's spirit has entered this bundle, and can be helped by its mother. Presents and sacrificial gifts are made to it. Toys and useful implements are tied to the doll for its use.' "3 In Guinea, so far from being afraid of the dead man, they keep him for a whole year or even several years in the house before burying him -which leads to a sort of mummification. In Bonny, where also he is embalmed, they do not part with him even when buried, but bury him in the house, as is customary on the Amazon and was the custom amongst the early Romans, 1 Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 335. * Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 177. 3 Dorman, Primitive Superstitions, 116 (Kohl's Kitchi Gami, 108). * Bastian, Loango Küste, i. 232. 6 Wallace, Amazon, 346. 5 Der Mensch, loc. cit. Greeks, Teutons, and other Aryan peoples. Even when the corpse is buried at a distance from the house, measures may be and are taken to facilitate the return of the spirit to his friends. Thus the Iroquois leave a small hole in the grave in order that the soul may pass freely in and out;1 and Count Goblet d'Alviella 2 conjectures that this practice was known to Neolithic man: "There is a certain detail, frequently observed in these dolmens, which has not failed to exercise the minds of the archæologists, especially when the dolmens were supposed to be the work of one particular people. It is the presence in one of the walls-generally the one that closes the entrance-of a hole not more than large enough for the passage of a human head. In the Caucasus and on the coast of Malabar, these holes have given the dolmens the popular name of 'dwarf - houses.' The hole is too small to serve as a passage for living men or for the introduction of the skeleton; or even for inserting the sacrifices, which, moreover, would be found piled up against the interior wall. The most probable explanation seems to be that it was intended for the soul to pass through." The belief that the soul cannot bring itself to desert its body leads some peoples, who wish the soul to stay with them, to burn the body, in order that the soul may be detached and free to revisit them. Thus in Serendyk the corpse is burnt to enable the soul to return, and the Catal (on the coast of Malayala) burn the good and bury the bad, for then the bad cannot return.3 But the soul, when released, whether by burning or otherwise, from the body, is apt to lose its way when it seeks to come home; so to the present day in the Tirol the corpse is always conveyed to the cemetery by the high-road, in order that the souls may have no difficulty in retracing the route. Or care is taken to catch the soul as soon as possible, so that it may not get lost; the Tonquinese cover the dying man's face with a cloth, the Marian Islanders with a vessel, to catch the soul; the Payaguas (South America) do not cover the corpse's head 1 Bastian, Oest. Asien, iii. 259. "The Ohio tribes bore holes in the coffin to let the spirit pass in and out," Dorman, Prim. Sup. 20. 2 Hibbert Lecture, 24. 3 Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 331. with earth, but with a vessel, and the Samoyeds put an inverted kettle over his head.1 That the presence of the spirit of the departed is desired, welcomed, and invited by many peoples, is shown by the feasts held in honour of the dead, not only before the funeral, but at intervals afterwards. Thus, "on the third, sixth, ninth, and fortieth days after the funeral, the old Prussians and Lithuanians used to prepare a meal, to which, standing at the door, they invited the soul of the deceased. . . if any morsels fell from the table they were left lying there for the lonely souls that had no living relations or friends to feed them." 19 2 Six weeks after the funeral, the Tscheremiss go to the grave, and invite the ghost to come to the house to a feast, at which a seat and food are provided for him.3 Elsewhere this feast becomes an annual all-souls' festival, and as it is or was found amongst the Greeks (the Apaturia), the Romans (Parentalia or Feralia), the Zoroastrians, the Bulgarians, the Russians, the Icelanders, and other Aryan peoples, we may perhaps infer that the practice goes back to the earliest Indo-European times. It is, however, by no means confined to the Aryan area, but is found amongst the Mixteks, the Karens, the Kocch, the Barea, and in Tonquin and Dahomey, as well as amongst the Tschuwasch and the Tscherkess.* In Dabaiba, according to Hakluyt's Historie of the West Indies (Decade vii. ch. 10), "in the sepulchers they leave certayne trenches on high, whereinto euery yeere they poure a little of the graine Maizium and certayne suppinges or smal quantities of wine made after their manner, and they suppose these thinges will bee profitable to the ghosts of their departed friendes." Where the dead are buried in the house, there is no need to issue a formal invitation to the spirit to come back and eat, for he can be and is fed as regularly as the living inmates. Thus in Bonny the dead are buried under the doorstep, a funnel communicates with the mouth of the deceased, and libations of blood are poured down the funnel 1 Bastian, Oest. Asien, iv. 386. 3 Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 336. 4 2 Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 177. Bastian, loc. cit., and Tylor, Prim. Cult. ii. 36; cf. for Ashanti, Tshispeaking Peoples, 167. by the negro every time he leaves the house. Even when the burial-place is away from the house, the same provision may be made for regularly tending the deceased. Thus in the Tenger Mountains (in Java) a hollow bamboo is inserted in the grave at burial, in order that offerings of drink and food may be poured down it.2 In the houses in which the bones of the chiefs of the Timmanees are kept there are small openings through which food can be given to the dead.3 In ancient Mycenæ an altar over one of the shaft-graves has been discovered, with a tube leading into the grave; the altar is evidently not intended for the worship of the gods, but is an oxápa, and the tube fulfils the same purpose as the bamboo in Java and the funnel in Bonny;5 while the trench dug in Dabaiba has its exact parallel in the Greek Bólpos, into which Odysseus, for instance, poured the blood of which the spirits were to drink. In historic times, in Greece blood was daily offered in Tronis of Daulia to the spirit of the hero-founder in the Mycenæan mode: Tò μèv αἷμα δι ̓ ὀπῆς ἐσχέουσιν ἐς τὸν τάφον. In Peru “the relations of the deceased used to pour some of the liquor named Chica into the grave, of which a portion was conveyed by some hollow canes into the mouth of the dead person.' "7 Blood, which is the life, is the food frequently offered to the dead. The priests of the Batta pour the blood of a fowl on the corpse.s In Ashanti the skeletons of deceased kings, carefully preserved and mounted on gold wire, are seated each on his own stool, and the living king washes each with blood.9 The Marian Islanders anoint the bones of their dead.10 Then by a substitution of similars, it is considered sufficient to colour the corpse, or some part thereof, with some red substance taking the place of blood. Thus in Tanna, "the face is kept exposed and painted red, and on the following day the grave is dug and the body buried.” 11 The 1 Bastian, Rechtsverhältnisse, 296, and Der Mensch, ii. 335; cf. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, 399. 2 Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 336. 4 ἐφ ̓ ἧς τοῖς ἥρωσιν ἀποθύομεν, Poll. i. 8. Б Rohde, Psyche, 33. 3 Bastian, loc. cit. 6 Pausanias, x. 4. 7 Zarate, Conquest of Peru (translated in Kerr, Voyages and Travels, iv. 362). 8 Bastian, Oest. Asien, v. 365. 10 Bastian, Oest. Asien, v. 281. Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 168. 11 Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, 93. |