Note (return) — LECTURE VIII

The funeral ceremonies observed by the Torres Straits Islanders were numerous and elaborate, and they present some features of special interest. They succeeded each other at intervals, sometimes of months, and amongst the Eastern Islanders in particular there were so many of them that, were it not that the bodies of the very young and the very old were treated less ceremoniously, the living would have been perpetually occupied in celebrating the obsequies of the dead.291 The obsequies differed somewhat from each other in the East and the West, but they had two characteristics in common: first, the skulls of the dead were commonly preserved apart from the bodies and were consulted as oracles; and, second, the ghosts of the recently deceased were represented in dramatic ceremonies by masked men, who mimicked the gait and gestures of the departed and were thought by the women and children to be the very ghosts themselves. But in details there were a good many variations between the practice of the Eastern and the Western Islanders. We will begin with the customs of the Western Islanders.