Note 217.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Turning now to two other widely separated cultural regions, we will first of all notice a significant article of dress worn by a widow in the eastern islands of Torres Straits. The ordinary dress of a woman comprised invariably a petticoat (sometimes more than one) of ample size, extending from the waist to the knee or thereabouts, and made of split leaves or bark-fibre. But a widow, and she alone, “twisted up a petticoat of banana leaves, and, passing it between her legs, fixed it at her waistband. This was the first sign of widowhood,” and had a special name. It was put on as soon as the preliminary ceremonies had finished, and prior to the removal of the body for the purpose of mummification. The widow continued to wear it after she had discarded every other sign of mourning, and until she married again.217.1 In the Mekeo district of British New Guinea, inhabited by a population consisting, so far as has been ascertained, of a fusion of Melanesians and Papuans, the lot of a widower is not a happy one. So closely is he haunted by the ghost of his deceased wife that he becomes a social outcast, shunned by everyone, and loses all civil rights, such is the horror he inspires. Excluded thus from communion with his fellow-men, he skulks alone in the long grass and the bushes; for he must not be seen. He invariably carries, like the Ewhe widow, a tomahawk to defend himself against the dreaded spirit of his departed spouse, who, we are told, would do him an ill turn if she could. This may, to be sure, as the missionary to whom we are indebted for the report presents it, be no more than the natural malignancy of the dead, whose chief delight is to harm the living.218.1 The missionary, however, may not have penetrated the true inwardness of the superstition. At all events, elsewhere there is no room for doubt.