tearing the hair, rending the garments, and cutting and wounding
the body were originally intended to establish a life-bond between
the dead and the living. The survivors, he argues, in leaving
portions of their hair and garments, and yet more by causing
their own blood to stream over the corpse from self-inflicted
wounds, by cutting off a finger and throwing it into the grave,
leave what is eminently their own with the dead, so drawing
closer their tie with him. Conversely, many savages daub themselves
with the blood and other effluences of their dead kinsmen,
and explain their custom by saying that in this way a portion
of the dead is incorporated in themselves. Often the survivors,
especially the widows, attach the bones or part of them to their
persons and wear them, or at least keep them in their houses.
The retention of the locks of the deceased and of parts of his
dress is equally common. There is also another side to such
customs. Having in their possession bits of the dead, and being
so far in communion with him, the survivors are surer of his
friendship. They have ensured themselves against ghosts who
are apt to be by nature envious and mischievous. But whatever
their original significance, the tearing of cheeks and hair and
garments and cutting with knives are mostly expressions of real
sorrow, and, as Robertson Smith remarks, of deprecation and
supplication to an angry god or spirit. It must not be supposed
that the savage or ancient man feels less than ourselves the
poignancy of loss.
6. Death-witchery has close parallels in the witch and heretic hunts of the Christians, but, happily for us, only flourishes to-day among savages. Sixty % of the deaths which occur in West Africa are, according to Miss Mary Kingsley—a credible witness—believed to be due to witchcraft and sorcery. The blacks regard old age or effusion of blood as the sole legitimate causes of death. All ordinary diseases are in their opinion due to private magic on the part of neighbours, just as a widespread epidemic marks the active hatred “of some great outraged nature spirit, not of a mere human dabbler in devils.”[1] Similarly in Christian countries an epidemic is set down to the wrath of a God offended by the presence of Jews, Arians and other heretics. The duty of an African witch-doctor is to find out who bewitched the deceased, just as it was of an inquisitor to discover the heretic. Every African post-mortem accordingly involves the murder of the person or persons who bewitched the dead man and caused him to die. The death-rate by these means is nearly doubled; but, since the use of poison against an obnoxious neighbour is common, the right person is occasionally executed. It is also well for neighbours not to quarrel, for, if they do and one of them dies of smallpox, the other is likely to be slain as a witch, and his lungs, liver and spleen impaled on a pole at the entrance of the village. It is the same case with the Australian blacks: “no such thing as natural death is realized by the native; a man who dies has of necessity been killed by some other man, or perhaps even by a woman, and sooner or later that man or woman will be attacked. In the normal condition of the tribe every death meant the killing of another individual.”[2]
7. Lastly, a primitive interment guards against the double risk of the ghost haunting the living and of ghouls or vampires taking possession of the corpse. The latter end is likely to be achieved if the body is cremated, for then there is no nidus to harbour the demon; but whether, in the remote antiquity to which belong many barrows containing incinerated remains, this motive worked, cannot be ascertained. The Indo-European race seems to have cremated at an early epoch, perhaps before the several races of East and West separated. In Christian funeral rites many prayers are for the protection of the body from violation by vampires, and it would seem as if such a motive dictated the architectural solidity of some ancient tombs. Christian graves were for protection regularly sealed with the cross; and the following is a characteristic prayer from the old Armenian rite for the burial of a layman:
“Preserve, Almighty Lord, this man’s spirit with all saints and with all lovers of Thy holy name. And do Thou seal and guard the sepulchre of Thy servant, Thou who shuttest up the depths and sealest them with Thy almighty right hand ... so let the seal of Thy Lordship abide unmoved upon this man’s dwelling-place and upon the shrine which guards Thy servant. And let not any filthy and unclean devil dare to approach him, such as assail the body and souls of the heathen, who possess not the birth of the holy font, and have not the dread seal laid upon their graves.”
A terrible and revolting picture of the superstitious belief in ghouls which violate Christian tombs is given by Leo Allatius (who held it) in his tract De opinionibus quorundam Graecorum (Paris, 1646). It was probably the fear of such demonic assaults on the dead that inspired the insanitary custom of burying the dead under the floors of churches, and as near as possible to the altar. In the Greek Church this practice was happily forbidden by the code of Justinian as well as by the older law in the case of churches consecrated with Encaenia and deposition of relics. In the Armenian Church the same rule holds, and Ephrem Syrus in his testament particularly forbade his body to be laid within a church. Such prohibitions, however, are a witness to the tendency in question.
The custom of lighting candles round a dead body and watching at its side all night was originally due to the belief that a corpse, like a person asleep, is specially liable to the assaults of demons. The practice of tolling a bell at death must have had a similar origin, for it was a common medieval belief that the sound of a consecrated bell drives off the demons which when a man dies gather near in the air to waylay his fleeting soul. For a like reason the consecrated bread of the Eucharist was often buried with believers, and St Basil is said to have specially consecrated a Host to be placed in his coffin.
8. Some of the rites described under the previous heads may be really inspired by the fear of the dead haunting the living, but it must be kept in mind that the taboo attaching to a dead body is one thing and fear of a ghost another. A corpse is buried or burned, or scaffolded on a tree, a tower or a house-top, in order to get it out of the way and shield society from the dangerous infection of its taboo; but ghosts quâ ghosts need not be feared and a kinsman’s ghost usually is not. On the contrary, it is fed and consoled with everything it needs, is asked not to go away but to stay, is in a thousand ways assured of the sorrow and sympathy of the survivors. Even if the body be eaten, it is merely to keep the soul of the deceased inside the circle of kinsmen, and Strabo asserts that the ancient Irish and Massagetae regarded it as a high honour to be so consumed by relatives. In Santa Cruz in Melanesia they keep the bones for arrow heads and store a skull in a box and set food before it “saying that this is the man himself” (R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 264), or the skull and jaw bone are kept and “are called mangite, which are saka, hot with spiritual power, and by means of which the help of the lio’a, the powerful ghost of the man whose relics these are, can be obtained” (ibid. p. 262). Here we have the savage analogue to Christian relics. So the Australian natives make pointing sticks out of the small bones of the arm, with which to bewitch enemies.
We may conclude then that in the most primitive societies, where blood-kinship is the only social tie and root of social custom it is the shades, not of kinsmen, but of strangers, who as such are enemies, that are dangerous and uncanny. In more developed societies, however, all ghosts alike are held to be so; and if a ghost walks it is because its body has not been properly interred or because its owner was a malefactor. Still, even allowing for this, it remains true that for a friendly ghost the proper place is the grave and not the homes of the living, and accordingly the Aruntas with cries of Wah! Wah! with wearing of fantastic head-dresses, wild dancing and beating of the air with hands and weapons “drive the spirit away from the old camp which it is supposed to haunt,” and which has been set fire to, and hunt it at a run into the grave prepared, and there stamp it down into the earth. “The loud shouting of the men and women shows him that they do not wish to be frightened by him in his present state, and that they will be angry with him if he does not rest.”
