Note 580 — LECTURE XVI
Reading edition
Footnote 580:
(return)
G. Turner, Samoa a Hundred Years Ago and long before (London, 1884), pp. 335 sq. This account is based on information furnished by Sualo, a Samoan teacher, who lived for a long time on the island. The statement that the fire kindled on the grave was intended "to enable the soul of the departed to rise to the sun" may be doubted; it may be a mere inference of Dr. Turner's Samoan informant. More probably the fire was intended to warm the shivering ghost. I do not remember any other evidence that the souls of the Melanesian dead ascend to the sun; certainly it is much more usual for them to descend into the earth.