ments destroyed, but his plantations are ravaged and his cocoanut palms are laid low.[1] In Mabuiag any food of which he was particularly fond, and his drinking water, are placed beside him, while his gardens are destroyed, his cocoanut trees and banana palms are knocked down, and his sweet potatoes are uprooted. Various reasons are assigned by the natives, as notably that it is "like good-bye."[2] Sir James Frazer thinks it is done to drive away the spirit, and asks: "How could he have the heart to return to the garden which in his life it had been his pride to cultivate?"[3] But the reason may be simply that the things are felt to be polluted, are comprised within the shadow of the death fear, and therefore they are tabooed. This view receives support from Mr. Codrington's account of the Melanesians, who say definitely that they do not cut down the cocoanut palms to benefit the ghost; but "because he ate of them, and no one else shall."[4] This attitude would explain the curious fact that the widow in Bartle Bay may not eat any dish which had been a favourite with her husband.[5] Sir James Frazer thinks the fear is that he might be tempted back to earth by the savoury smell of the food he loved in the body.[6] Such an explanation will not cover the facts in Tubetube, where the orphans are debarred from eating fruit, flesh, and garden produce from the father's hamlet or indeed from its neighbourhood, though when considered as the result of an extensive taboo they are easy to understand.
Concurrently with other animistic developments we find the idea that this food is actually enjoyed by the departed
- ↑ Frazer, Belief in Immortality, p. 327.
- ↑ Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, pp. 248, 249, 250.
- ↑ Frazer, Belief in Immortality, p. 174. Compare Junod, Life of a South African Tribe, i. 147, for purification of the gardens of deceased.
- ↑ Codrington, The Melanesians, Oxford, 1891, p. 255.
- ↑ Seligman, Melanesians of British New Guinea, p. 612, sqq. and 116 sqq.
- ↑ Frazer, Belief in Immortality, p. 208.
