This figure represents a departed chief who has gone to the under world and become a “Demit.”
The figure is made on a framework of wood or bamboo, covered with clay and vegetable fibre. The head is the real skull of the chief covered in the same way as the body with real hair and beard; the arms, round which are pigs’ tusks, are made from a small plant, the root forming the hands. One of the reasons the natives have for making figures in this way is that the chief may still be able to look upon his friends. At the side of the figure is a bundle of sacred pigs’ jaws; in front is a priest.
The body of the effigy is built up on a framework of wood, and covered with the same preparation of clay and fibre and modelled in a like manner, but, as a rule, it is seriously out of proportion. When this imitation body is finished it is coloured in three shades, red, black, and white (sometimes blue is found on them, but as the natives are unable to obtain this colour naturally it is only used where the traders can supply it). Down the trunk of the body long stripes are made, running {157} vertically or horizontally, and round the legs bands of these alternate colours are painted. The shoulders and knees are decorated with grotesque faces, surmounted by tufts of fibre which often rise to a distance of three or four inches. A bamboo cane is stuck in each of these tufts, and on the top of it splendid specimens of boars’ tusks are sometimes to be seen.
The hands of these idols are made from the roots of a sapling, and add to the weirdness of the picture. Bracelets of boars’ tusks are also found on some of these effigies.
Other sheds and places of worship contain somewhat different things. The sacred stone is guarded by nude wooden figures of men and women, cut in the roughest style and free from ornament. The posts holding up the shed have also elaborate figures of strangely misshaped heads with shapeless bodies attached.
But to the more important part of their religion. In every village there is a “sing-sing” ground laid out—this is the slang term for it, but it is appropriate. These grounds are kept for dancing, not the frivolous dancing of the Europeans, but a sacred, awe-inspiring, religious ceremony. The very idea of frivolity seems wrong in such a place. {158} The cleared space is surrounded by a dense, dark bush, and on the edge of the clearing high wooden posts slanting in various directions are stuck into the ground. These drums, for such they are, are grotesque things, standing from four to six feet high, with a dark slit down the centre, and a fearsome face carved on the front; some are all face and look like terrible nightmares, and each has behind it a carved stone.
Picture yourself on one of these grounds on a warm moonlight night, when a dance is to take place. Dense clouds are rolling over the sky and now and then obscuring the moon or sending fitful shadows across the bare space; beyond is black bush so thick that it looks like a weird inferno. You wait and listen, and hear nothing but the roar of the distant volcano. Presently a crowd of stark naked natives make their appearance and take up their position each by the side of a drum, and begin a dull beating noise to call the dancers. In the centre of the ground is a circle of five or six white poles, some thirty feet long, bent and crooked and leaning all ways.
DRUM GROVE AT MELE, NEW HEBRIDES
These drums are made of large tree-trunks, burnt out in the centre through the long slot down the middle; both the slot and the round openings are sound-holes. The meaning of the designs on the drums is unknown. A heavy round drum-stick of wood is used. Every one of the drum-groves I have seen appeared to be haunted by an old man or two. Round the drums the “M’AKI” ceremony takes place.