Note (return) — LECTURE XVI

In the island of Florida, two days after the death of a chief or of any person who was much esteemed, the relatives and friends assemble and hold a funeral feast, at which they throw a bit of food into the fire for the ghost, saying, "This is for you."562 In other of the Solomon Islands morsels of food are similarly thrown on the fire at the death-feasts as the dead man's share.563 Thus, in the Shortlands Islands, when a famous chief named Gorai died, his body was burnt and his relatives cast food, beads, and other property into the fire. The dead chief had been very fond of tea, so one of his daughters threw a cup of tea into the flames. Women danced a funeral dance round the pyre till the body was consumed.564 Why should the dead man's food and property be burnt? No explanation of the practice is given by our authorities, so we are left to conjecture the reason of it. Is it that by volatilising the solid substance of the food you make it more accessible to the thin unsubstantial nature of the ghost? Is it that you destroy the property of the ghost lest he should come back in person to fetch it and so haunt and trouble the survivors? Is it that the spirits of the dead are supposed to reside in the fire on the hearth, so that offerings cast into the flames are transmitted to them directly? Whether it is with any such ideas that the Solomon Islanders throw food into the fire for ghosts, I cannot say. The whole question of the meaning of burnt sacrifice is still to a great extent obscure.