[233] Chalmers and Gill, Work and Adventure in New Guinea, p. 260.
That the mourning fast is essentially a precaution taken by the survivors, and not a tribute to the dead, is obvious from what has been said in a previous chapter.[234] When mourners mutilate, cut, or beat themselves, the original object of their doing so seems often to be to ward off the contagion of death.[235] Among the Bedouins of Morocco women at funerals not only scratch their faces, but also rub the wounds with cow-dung, and cow-dung is regarded as a means of purification. The mourning customs of painting the body and of assuming a special costume have been explained as attempts on the part of the survivors to disguise themselves;[236] but the latter custom may also have originated in the idea that a mourner is more or less polluted for a certain period and that therefore a dress worn by him then, being a seat of contagion, could not be used afterwards. Egede writes of the Greenlanders, “If they have happened to touch a corpse, they immediately cast away the clothes they have then on; and for this reason they always put on their old clothes when they go to a burying, in which they agree with the Jews.”[237] There can, finally, be no doubt that the widespread prohibition of mentioning the name of a dead person[238] does not in the first instance arise from respect for the departed, but from fear. To name him is to summon him; the Indians of Washington Territory even change their own names when a relative dies, because “they think the spirits of the dead will come back if they hear the same name called that they were accustomed to hear before death.”[239] But apart from this, a dead man’s name itself is probably felt to be defiling, or at all events produces an uncanny association of thought, which even among ourselves makes many people reluctant to mention it.[240] And to do so may also be a wrong to other persons who would be endangered thereby. Among the Goajiro Indians of Colombia, to mention a dead man before his relatives is a dreadful offence, which is often punished even with death.[241]
[234] Supra, [ii. 302 sqq.]
[235] Cf. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 302.
[236] Frazer, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. 73. Idem, ‘Folk-Lore in the Old Testament,’ in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 110.
[237] Egede, op. cit. p. 197.
[238] Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, p. 144. Nyrop, ‘Navnets magt,’ in Mindre afhandlinger udgivne af det philologisk-historiske samfund, pp. 147-151, 190 sq. and passim. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 421 sqq. Clodd, Tom Tit Tot, p. 166 sqq. Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 230 sq. (Greenlanders). Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 84 (North American Indians). Bourke, ‘Medicine-Men of the Apache,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 462. Batchelor, Ainu and their Folk-Lore, p. 242. Georgi, op. cit. iii. 27, 28, 262 sq. (Samoyedes and shamanistic peoples in Siberia). Jackson, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 406 (Samoyedes). Rivers, Todas, p. 625 sqq. Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces, i. 11 (Agariya, a Dravidian tribe), von Wlislocki, Volksglaube der Zigeuner, p. 96 (Gypsies). Yseldijk, in Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 42. (Kotting, in the island of Flores). Roth, North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 164. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 498. Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 82. Thornton, in Hill and Thornton, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 7. Fison and Howitt, op. cit. p. 249 (Kurnai). Curr, Squatting in Victoria, p. 272 (Bangerang). Hinde, op. cit. p. 50 (Masai). Duveyrier, Exploration du Sahara, p. 415 (Touareg). Werner, ‘Custom of “Hlonipa,”’ in Jour. African Soc. 1905, April, p. 346 (Zulus).
[239] Swan, Residence in Washington Territory, p. 189.
[240] I had much difficulty in inducing my teacher in Shelḥa, a Berber from the Great Atlas Mountains, to tell me the equivalent for “illness” in his own language; and when he finally did so, he spat immediately afterwards. Among the Central Australian Arunta the older men will not look at the photograph of a deceased person (Gillen, ‘Aborigines of the McDonnell Ranges,’ in Report of the Horn Expedition, iv. ‘Anthropology,’ p. 168).
[241] Simons, ‘Exploration of the Goajira Peninsula,’ in Proceed. Roy. Geograph. Soc. N. S. vii. 791.