Note (return) — LECTURE XII

However, the Bukaua also look on the ghosts of their ancestors in a more amiable light as beings who, if properly appealed to, can and will help them in the affairs of life, especially by procuring for them good crops. Hence when they are planting their fields, which are formed in clearings of the forest, they take particular care to insert shoots of all their crops in the ground near the tree stumps which remain standing, because the souls of their dead grandfathers and great-grandfathers are believed to be sitting on the stumps watching their descendants at their work. Accordingly in the act of planting they call out the names of these forefathers and pray them to guard the field in order that their living children may have food and not suffer from hunger. And at harvest, when the first-fruits of the taro, bananas, sugar-cane, and so forth have been brought back from the fields, a portion of them is offered in a bowl to the spirits of the forefathers in the house of the landowner, and the spirits are addressed in prayer as follows: "O ye who have guarded our field as we prayed you to do, there is something for you; now and henceforth behold us with favour." While the family are feasting on the rest of the first-fruits, the householder will surreptitiously stir the offerings in the bowl with his finger, and will then shew the bowl to the others as a proof that the souls of the dead have really partaken of the good things provided for them.424 A hunter will also pray to his dead father to drive the wild pigs into his net.425