Note 227.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Though not by any means so conclusively as the practices just discussed, the delay between the ending of a first marriage by the death of one of the parties and the second marriage of the other party seems to indicate the same dread of the deceased. The mourning ceremonies must usually all be accomplished before the survivor, at all events if a woman, can be married again. With the completion of the mourning ceremonies it is a common belief, of which we have had more than one instance, that the deceased is finally despatched to the society of the dead; in any case, he is at rest, and is very often speedily forgotten. Among the Namib-Bushmen of South-West Africa, a mongrel people, the result of the intermingling of probably many broken tribes with an original stock of Hottentots, marriage is monogamous. That does not mean that death only can separate the married pair. If separation between two living spouses take place, either can marry again forthwith. But if the separation be caused by death, something like half a year (that is to say, either a rainy or a dry season) must elapse before re-marriage; for, we are told, the belief prevails that, for example, the woman whom a widower marries without waiting will soon herself die. And when the widower does venture on a new marriage, it must be to a sister of his deceased wife if there be one at liberty.227.1 So in the Togo district of Atakpame, a woman who is left by her husband, even if only for a time, may be taken by another man; and this, it seems, under German rule renders it difficult to get men to work at the making of roads, for his absence will cost the labourer his wife. But when a man dies his widow must wait for three farm-years (a farm-year equals ten months) before she marries again. The delay seems not to be popular. In the western portion of the district, among the Akposso, the time has been shortened to two years, while in the eastern portion, where the people are less purely Akposso, the widow marries after eleven months. The modern Akposso widow holds it silly to wait longer: she has not murdered her first husband, and therefore she ought, she thinks, to be able to marry sooner. But she must wait these eleven months, else she would die. If, however, her husband has been hanged for murder or some other reason, she may marry at the end of two or three months. The ground alleged for this shortening of the period of delay is economic. There seems to be no rule requiring the widow to be taken by a surviving member of the husband’s family, though the children resulting from a second marriage belong to it. If she cannot find another husband, therefore, she must go back to her own family and she may become a burden upon it. On marrying she must work in her husband’s fields, for the benefit of himself and his family. But she is entitled to a small field for herself, out of which she may make her own profit; and there is now plenty of money in the country, and a general desire to earn as much of it and as soon as possible.228.1 All this may be very true; but seeing that the widow who marries prematurely must die, she will not be likely to run so serious a risk for the chance of making a little money. If we are right in supposing that the death-penalty is one exacted by the deceased, the conjecture will not be deemed unreasonable that hanging is believed to inflict such injuries on the ghost that its interference is not to be dreaded. The mode of death and the mutilations (if any) inflicted on the corpse are widely held to affect the departed in the future life.