Note 261.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF (continued 2)

But they go further: in all the greater degrees of mourning at least they indicate grief at his loss that is calculated to call down the pity and compassion of every beholder, and to deprecate the wrath or ill-humour of the deceased. It is very striking that while coarse and scanty garments (sackcloth or bark-cloths among peoples who usually wear cotton or wool, and mere loin-cloths or nothing at all among peoples usually clad) are worn in place of more luxurious stuffs, a frequently recurring prescription is old worn-out clothes. In the Tonga Islands the mourners (who are always women) are “habited in large old ragged mats—the more ragged, the more fit for the occasion, as being more emblematical of a spirit broken down, or, as it were, torn to pieces by grief.”261.1 In the hinterland of the Sherbro in West Africa, on the mourning for a chief’s death, the people most closely connected with him “presented an unkempt and slovenly appearance, their bodies draped in the oldest and dirtiest of their cloths.”261.2 Among the Baganda on the other side of the continent the mourning garb for an ordinary man is “old bark-cloths and a girdle of dry plantain leaves: the hair is unkempt, the nails are allowed to grow long like birds’ claws, and on the chest is a white patch, a mixture of water and ashes.”261.3 The custom of strewing ashes on the person is very widely practised: more than one example has been incidentally given. Among the Hebrews its use was not confined to mourning for the dead; repentance in dust and ashes is a familiar figure in English speech, and is derived from the Bible. The general air of neglect and misery produced by these practices might be paralleled in the mourning customs of most countries. Even in our own island little more than a hundred years ago it was noted that the chief mourner at a funeral in the parish of Llanvetherine, Monmouthshire, and elsewhere wore a dirty cloth about his head.261.4 And of many peoples the description by a French writer of the mourning garb among the Agni of Sanwi on the Ivory Coast would hold literally true: “Old black loin-cloths, unwashed for a long time. On ne se peigne pas—on ne fait pas de toilette—on reste modeste.”261.5