Accordingto 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.194.1Doubt 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 shecaused 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 ofhim, and two festivals in the year were established in his honour.196.1Not 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 fromseeing her son’s face. “I do but obey thy bidding,” he groaned, turning his face away. “Look back! thy house is burning.”197.1So 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.197.2The 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.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. Onenight, 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.199.1In 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 youngerthan 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.200.1A 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 fallin 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,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 ofLenore.202.1The 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 deniedit 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.203.1Satyrs and Fauns, under the name ofincubi, 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
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.204.1A 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 issaid,” 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.”205.1In 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.205.2A 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-lawas 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, hadthe 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 rightevil 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 theHeimskringlaand 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,208.2such as are probably to be found in all communities from time to time, but to cases in which the belief has been adopted by societyat 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.209.1In our country a luckless husband would find that the posthumous jealousy of his predecessor in theménageis 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 thesurvivor 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.210.1She 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.210.2After the death of his wifea 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.211.2On 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 hisfamily may dare to dwell there. If the widower take a new wife, he builds her a new house.212.1To 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 unwelcomerevenant. 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 hispower 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
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.214.1The 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,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.215.1Although 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, butthey 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
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.217.1In 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 thusfrom 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.218.1The 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 downon 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.219.1The 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.219.2Our 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.”219.3It isnot 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-CentralAfrica. 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.221.1The 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 herrelations.” 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.”222.1There 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.222.2The probability is confirmed by the practice of the Yaos, a neighbouring tribe, among whom the second husbandpays a man to pass a night with the widow before he takes her.223.1A 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 elaboratepurification 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.224.1But 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.224.2The 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.
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).225.1The 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.225.2By 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 performanceof 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 toa sister of his deceased wife if there be one at liberty.227.1So 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 asmuch of it and as soon as possible.228.1All 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.”228.2This is so much in harmony withthe 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.”229.1Thus 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 tribeswidows 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.230.1But 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.230.2The 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 calledsaukan mora, or crown of the rival wife. This plate represents the deceased, and is propitiated to avert her hostility.230.3Indeed, 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 theCentral 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 thekhárás(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.231.1The 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.231.2So 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.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. Evenapart 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, alwaysfrom 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.