Note (return) — LECTURE XVI

Similarly at Bugotu in the island of Ysabel (one of the Solomon Islands) the ghosts of the dead are supposed to go away to an island, and yet to haunt their graves and shew themselves to the survivors by night. In the island of the dead there is a pool with a narrow tree-trunk lying across it. Here is stationed Bolafagina, the ghostly lord of the place. Every newly arrived ghost must appear before him, and he examines their hands to see whether they bear the mark of the sacred frigate-bird cut on them; if they have the mark, the ghosts pass across the tree-trunk and mingle with the departed spirits in the world of the dead. But ghosts who have not the mark on their hands are cast into the gulf and perish out of their ghostly life: this is the second death.567 The same notion of a second death meets us in a somewhat different form among the natives of Saa in Malanta, another of the Solomon Islands. All the ghosts of these people swim across the sea to two little islands called Marapa, which lie off Marau in Guadalcanar. There the ghosts of children live in one island and the ghosts of grown-up people in another; for the older people would be plagued by the chatter of children if they all dwelt together in one island. Yet in other respects the life of the departed spirits in these islands is very like life on earth. There are houses, gardens, and canoes there just as here, but all is thin and unsubstantial. Living men who land in the islands see nothing of these things; there is a pool where they hear laughter and merry cries, and where the banks are wet with invisible bathers. But the life of the ghosts in these islands is not eternal. The spirits of common folk soon turn into the nests of white ants, which serve as food for the more robust ghosts. Hence a living man will say to his idle son, "When I die, I shall have ants' nests to eat, but then what will you have?" The ghosts of persons who were powerful on earth last much longer. So long as they are remembered and worshipped by the living, their natural strength remains unabated; but when men forget them, and turn to worship some of the more recent dead, then no more food is offered to them in sacrifice, so they pine away and change into white ants' nests just like common folk. This is the second death. However, while the ghosts survive they can return from the islands to Saa and revisit their village and friends. The living can even discern them in the form of dim and fleeting shadows. A man who wishes for any reason to see a ghost can always do so very simply by taking a pinch of lime from his betel-box and smearing it on his forehead. Then the ghost appears to him quite plainly.568