[215.1] Rev. J. H. Weeks, Folk-Lore, xix. 430; xxi. 463.
[216.1] Junod, R. E. S., i. 162; id., The Fate of the Widows amongst the Ba-Ronga, reprinted from the report of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, 1908 (Grahamstown, Cape Colony, 1909), 5. It is fair to say that another and somewhat more popular account by M. Junod states: “The night [after the burial] has come. All the widows sleep in the open, their huts, which belonged to the deceased, being taboo. If it rains, they sleep in other huts of the village” (S. A. Tribe, i. 145). I do not know how to reconcile these two statements. I have adopted that which M. Junod has twice affirmed, the articles in the R. E. S. being particularly detailed and precise. Among the northern clans of the Thonga, he tells us (S. A. Tribe, i. 150) that the first night of mourning “everyone [scil. in the village] sleeps in the open.”
[217.1] C. S. Myers and A. C. Haddon, Torres Str. Rep., vi. 153, 158, 160; Haddon, ibid. (1912), iv. 60. In the Murray Islands “the ghost of a recently deceased person is particularly feared; it haunts the neighbourhood for two or three months.” But whether it specially attacks the widow the members of the expedition do not seem to have learned (ibid., vi. 253). The peculiarity of the dress, however, speaks for itself.
[218.1] Frazer, Taboo, 144, citing Father Guis, Les Missions Catholiques (1902), xxxiv, 208. Among the Abarambo of the Congo basin, north of the Wele, the husband or wife disappears in the bush for a time, the latter until she finds a new husband. The widow or widower blackens the face, binds a cord round the waist, wears nothing but an old garment and only eats raw food (Johnston, Grenfell, ii. 650).
[219.1] Teit, Jes. Exped., i. 332. Compare the Bella Coola tale cited above ([p. 200]).
[219.2] Peter Martyr, The Decades of the New World, in Arber, 100.
[219.3] Lumholtz, Unk. Mexico, i. 384 sqq. Four feasts are given for a woman. “She cannot run so fast, and it is therefore harder to chase her off.”
[221.1] Hobley, J. A. I., xli. 418. Among the neighbouring Atharaka and Akamba the duty of sleeping with the widow on the fifth night after the death is performed by a brother of the deceased (Champion, ibid., xlii. 84).
[222.1] Stannus, J. A. I., xl. 315.
[222.2] Compare the accounts of Anyanja funerals in Rattray, 92 (this account is by a native), and Werner, 165. In neither of these is the custom in question referred to.