Note 242.2 — BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST

Torday and Joyce, J. A. I., xxxvi. 50 (cf. 41). Professor Frazer has mentioned (Taboo, 186 n.) some other African cases in which the custom of painting the man-slayer may be intended as a disguise. None of them seem to be stronger than the above. He goes on to mention the Yabim of German New Guinea, among whom the relations of a murdered man, on accepting a bloodwit instead of avenging his death, must allow the family of the murderer to mark them with chalk on the brow. “If this is not done, the ghost of their murdered kinsman may come and trouble them; for example, he may drive away their swine or loosen their teeth.” I have no access to the German authority he cites; but I may suggest for what it may be worth that the chalk-mark is a certificate to the ghost that his relatives have done their duty by exacting a fine for his death, and that he has no cause to feel aggrieved with them—in fact, that he may feel well satisfied. Dr Frazer himself indeed once took this view, or something like it (Tylor Essays, 107).