Note 240.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF (continued 2)
Reading edition
The suggestion has been made that the change of garb is intended as a disguise to deceive the spirit of the deceased, and so to shelter the mourner from its attacks. On the one hand, many tribes unquestionably adopt the same costume after killing an enemy as on the death of a friend. Among the Abarambos of Welle in the French Soudan, when a native kills another he blackens his face, girds himself with a grass cord and eats only raw bananas, to hinder the ghost from coming to kill him in his turn. The same rites are observed on the death of a husband or wife, with the addition that the survivor disappears for a time into the woods.240.1