Garden ghosts.
Different from these truculent spirits are the peaceful ghosts who cause the garden to bear fruit. If the gardener happens to know such a ghost, he can pray and sacrifice to him on his own account; but if he has no such friend in the spirit world, he must employ an expert. The man of skill goes into the midst of the garden with a little mashed food in his left hand, and smiting it with his right hand he calls on the ghost to come and eat. He says: "This produce thou shall eat; give supernatural power (mana) to this garden, that food may be good and plentiful." He digs holes at the four corners of the garden, and in them he buries such leaves as the ghost loves, so that the garden may have ghostly power and be fruitful. And when the yams sprout, he twines them with the particular creeper and fastens them with the particular wood to which the ghost is known to be partial. These agricultural ghosts are very sensitive; if a man enters the garden, who has just eaten pork or cuscus or fish or shell-fish, the ghost of the garden manifests his displeasure by causing the produce of the garden to droop; but if the eater lets three or four days go by after his meal, he may then enter the garden with impunity, for the food has left his stomach. For a similar reason, apparently, when the yam vines are being trained, the men sleep near the gardens and never approach their wives; for should they tread the garden after conjugal intercourse, the yams would be blighted.[594]
Human sacrifices to ghosts.
Sometimes the favour of a ghost is obtained by human sacrifices. On these occasions the flesh of the victim does not, like the flesh of a pig, furnish the materials of a sacrificial banquet; but little bits of it are eaten by young men to improve their fighting power and by elders for a special purpose. Such sacrifices are deemed more effectual than the sacrifices of less precious victims; and advantage was sometimes taken of a real or imputed crime to offer the criminal to some ghost. So, for example, within living memory Dikea, chief of Ravu, convicted a certain man of stealing tobacco, and sentenced him to be sacrificed; and the grown lads ate pieces of him cooked in the sacrificial fire. Again, the same chief offered another human sacrifice in the year 1886. One of his wives had proved false, and he sent her away vowing that she should not return till he had offered a human sacrifice to Hauri. Also his son died, and he vowed to kill a man for him. The vow was noised abroad, and everybody knew that he would pay well for somebody to kill. Now the Savo people had bought a captive boy in Guadalcanar, but it turned out a bad bargain, for the boy was lame and nearly blind. So they brought him to Dikea, and he gave them twenty coils of shell money for the lad. Then the chief laid his hand on the victim's breast and cried, "Hauri! here is a man for you," and his followers killed him with axes and clubs. The cripple's skull was added to the chief's collection, and his legs were sent about the country to make known what had been done. In Bugotu of Ysabel, when the people had slain an enemy in fight, they used to bring back his head in triumph, cut slices off it, and burn them in sacrifice. And if they took a prisoner alive, they would bring him to the sacred place, the grave of the man whose ghost was to be honoured. There they bound him hand and foot and buffeted him till he died, or if he did not die under the buffets they cut his throat. As they beat the man with their fists, they called on the ghost to take him, and when he was dead, they burned a bit of him in the fire for the ghost.[595]
Sacrifices to ghosts in Saa.
At Saa in Malanta, one of the Solomon Islands, sacrifices are offered to ghosts on various occasions. Thus on his return from a voyage a man will put food in the case which contains the relics of his dead father; and in the course of his voyage, if he should land in a desert isle, he will throw food and call on father, grandfather, and other deceased friends. Again, when sickness is ascribed to the anger of a ghost, a man of skill is sent for to discover what particular ghost is doing the mischief. When he has ascertained the culprit, he is furnished by the patient's relatives with a little pig, which he is to sacrifice to the ghost as a substitute for the sick man. Provided with this vicarious victim he repairs to the haunt of the ghost, strangles the animal, and burns it whole in a fire along with grated yam, coco-nut, and fish. As he does so, he calls out the names of all the ghosts of his family, his ancestors, and all who are deceased, down even to children and women, and he names the man who furnished the pig for the ghostly repast. A portion of the mixed food he preserves unburnt, wraps it in a dracaena leaf, and puts it beside the case which contains the relics of the man to whose ghost the sacrifice has been offered. Sometimes, however, instead of burning a pig in the fire, which is an expensive and wasteful form of sacrifice, the relatives of the sick man content themselves with cooking a pig or a dog in the oven, cutting up the carcase, and laying out all the parts in order. Then the sacrificer comes and sits at the animal's head, and calls out the names of all the dead members of the ghost's family in order downwards, saying, "Help, deliver this man, cut short the line that has bound him." Then the pig is eaten by all present except the women; nothing is burnt.[596]
Sacrifices of first-fruits to ghosts in Saa.
The last sort of sacrifices to ghosts at Saa which we need notice is the sacrifice of first-fruits. Thus, when the yams are ripe the people fetch some of them from each garden to offer to the ghosts. All the male members of the family assemble at the holy place which belongs to them. Then one of them enters the shrine, lays a yam beside the skull which lies there, and cries with a loud voice to the ghost, "This is yours to eat." The others call quietly on the names of all the ancestors and give their yams, which are very many in number, because one from each garden is given to each ghost. If any man has besides a relic of the dead, such as a skull, bones, or hair, in his house, he takes home a yam and sets it beside the relic. Again, the first flying-fish of the season are sacrificed to ghosts, who may take the form of sharks; for we shall see presently that Melanesian ghosts are sometimes supposed to inhabit the bodies of these ferocious monsters. Some ghost-sharks have sacred places ashore, where figures of sharks are set up. In that case the first flying-fish are cooked and set before the shark images. But it may be that a shark ghost has no sacred place on land, and then there is nothing for it but to take the flying-fish out to sea and shred them into the water, while the sacrificer calls out the name of the particular ghost whom he desires to summon to the feast.[597]
Vicarious sacrifices for the sick.
Vicarious sacrifices for the sick are offered in San Cristoval to a certain malignant ghost called Tapia, who is believed to seize a man's soul and tie it up to a banyan tree. When that has happened, a man who knows how to manage Tapia intercedes with him. He takes a pig or fish to the sacred place and offers it to the grim ghost, saying, "This is for you to eat in place of that man; eat this, don't kill him." With that he can loose the captive soul and take it back to the sick man, who thereupon recovers.[598]