the audience. The overture having been concluded, the first ghost was seen to glide from the forest and come dancing towards the beach. If he represented a woman, his costume was more elaborate than it had been under the shades of evening the night before. His whole body was painted red. A petticoat of leaves encircled his waist: a mask of leaves, surmounted by tufts of cassowary and pigeon feathers, concealed his head; and in his hands he carried brooms of coco-nut palm leaf. If he personated a man, he held a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other, and his costume was the usual dress of a dancer, with the addition of a head-dress of leaves and feathers and a diamond-shaped ornament of bamboo, which he held in his teeth and which entirely concealed his features. He approached dancing and mimicking the gestures of the person whom he represented. At the sight the women wailed, and the widow would cry out, "That's my husband," the mother would cry out, "That's my son." Then suddenly the drummers would call out, "Ah! Ah! Ai! Ai!" at which the women would fall to the ground, while the dancer retreated into the forest. In this way one ghost after the other would make his appearance, play his part, and vanish. Occasionally two of them would appear and dance together. The women and children, we are told, really believed that the actors were the ghosts of their dead kinsfolk. When the first dancer had thus danced before the people, he advanced with the drummers towards the framework on which the mummy was stretched, and there he repeated his dance before it. But the people were not allowed to witness this mystery; they remained wailing on the beach, for this was the moment at which the ghost of the dead man or woman was supposed to be departing for ever to the land of shades.307
Preservation of the mummy.
Some days afterwards the mummy was affixed to a new framework of bamboo and carried into the hut. In former times the huts were of a beehive shape, and the framework which supported the mummy was fastened to the central post on which the roof rested. The body thus stood erect within the house. Its dried skin had been painted red. The empty orbits of the eyes had been filled with pieces of pearl-shell of the nautilus to imitate eyes, two round spots of black beeswax standing for the pupils. The ears were decorated with shreds of the sago-palm or with grey seeds. A frontlet of pearl-shell nautilus adorned the head, and a crescent of pearl-shell the breast. In the darkness of the old-fashioned huts the body looked like a living person. In course of time it became almost completely mummified and as light as if it were made of paper. Swinging to and fro with every breath of wind, it turned its gleaming eyes at each movement of the head. The hut was now surrounded by posts and ropes to prevent the ghost from making his way into it and taking possession of his old body. Ghosts were supposed to appear only at night, and it was imagined that in the dark they would stumble against the posts and entangle themselves in the ropes, till in despair they desisted from the attempt to penetrate into the hut. In time the mummy mouldered away and fell to pieces. If the deceased was a male, the head was removed and a wax model of it made and given to the brother, whether blood or tribal brother, of the dead man. The head thus prepared or modelled in wax, with eyes of pearl-shell, was used in divination. The decaying remains of the body were taken to the beach and placed on a platform supported by four posts. That was their last resting-place.308
General summary. Dramas of the dead.
To sum up the foregoing evidence, we may say that if the beliefs and practices of the Torres Straits Islanders which I have described do not amount to a worship of the dead, they contain the elements out of which such a worship might easily have been developed. The preservation of the bodies of the dead, or at least their skulls, in the houses, and the consultation of them as oracles, prove that the spirits of the dead are supposed to possess knowledge which may be of great use to the living; and the custom suggests that in other countries the images of the gods may perhaps have been evolved out of the mummies of the dead. Further, the dramatic representation of the ghosts in a series of striking and impressive performances indicates how a sacred and in time a secular drama may elsewhere have grown out of a purely religious celebration concerned with the souls of the departed. In this connexion we are reminded of Professor Ridgeway's theory that ancient Greek tragedy originated in commemorative songs and dances performed at the tomb for the purpose of pleasing and propitiating the ghost of the mighty dead.309 Yet the mortuary dramas of the Torres Straits Islanders can hardly be adduced to support that theory by analogy so long as we are ignorant of the precise significance which the natives themselves attached to these remarkable performances. There is no clear evidence that the dramas were acted for the amusement and gratification of the ghost rather than for the edification of the spectators. One important act certainly represented, and might well be intended to facilitate, the final departure of the spirit of the deceased to the land of souls. But the means taken to effect that departure might be adopted in the interests of the living quite as much as out of a tender regard for the welfare of the dead, since the ghost of the recently departed is commonly regarded with fear and aversion, and his surviving relations resort to many expedients for the purpose of ridding themselves of his unwelcome presence.
Footnote 274: (return)
S. H. Ray, in Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, iii. (Cambridge, 1907) pp. 509–511; A. C. Haddon, "The Religion of the Torres Straits Islanders," Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tyler (Oxford, 1907), p. 175.
Footnote 275: (return)
Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, iv. 92 sqq., 144 sqq., v. 346, vi. 207 sqq.
Footnote 276: (return)
A. C. Haddon, in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 186.
Footnote 277: (return)
Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vi. 254 sq.
Footnote 278: (return)
Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vi. 254 sqq.
Footnote 279: (return)
A. C. Haddon, in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 181.
Footnote 280: (return)
Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. 355 sq., vi. 251; A. C. Haddon, in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 179.
Footnote 281: (return)
For authorities see the references in the preceding note.
Footnote 282: (return)
Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vi. 253.
Footnote 283: (return)
Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. 248, 249.
Footnote
