The Eternal Belief in Immortality & Worship of the Dead. James George Frazer

live up aloft in the sky, from which they descend at night in the form of ghosts to haunt and trouble the living. On the whole the attitude of the Narrinyeri towards their dead kinsfolk seems to be dominated by fear; of affection there is apparently little or no trace. It is true that like most Australian tribes they indulge in extravagant demonstrations of grief at the death of their kinsfolk. A great lamentation and wailing is made by all the relations and friends of the deceased. They cut off their hair close to the head and besmudge themselves with oil and pounded charcoal. The women besmear themselves with the most disgusting filth. All beat and cut themselves and make a violent show of sorrow; and all the time that the corpse, rubbed over with grease and red ochre, is being dried over a slow fire in the hut, the women take it by turns to weep and wail before it, so that the lamentation never ceases for days. Yet Mr. Taplin was persuaded "that fear has more to do with most of these exhibitions than grief"; and he tells us that "for one minute a woman will appear in the deepest agony of grief and tears; a few minutes after, the conventional amount of weeping having been accomplished, they will laugh and talk with the merriest."¹⁷² The principal motive, in fact, for all this excessive display of sorrow would seem to be a fear lest the jealous ghost should think himself slighted and should avenge the slight on the cold-hearted relatives who do not mourn sufficiently for the irreparable loss they have sustained by his death. We may conjecture that the same train of thought explains the ancient and widespread custom of hiring professional mourners to wail over the dead; the tears and lamentations of his kinsfolk are not enough to soothe the wounded feelings of the departed, they must be reinforced by noisier expressions of regret.

      Deaths attributed by the Narrinyeri to sorcery.

But there is another powerful motive for all these violent demonstrations of grief, into the secret of which we are let by Mr. Taplin. He says that "all the relatives are careful to be present and not to be wanting in the proper signs of sorrow, lest they should be suspected of complicity in causing the death."¹⁷³ In fact the Narrinyeri, like many other savages, attribute all, or most, natural deaths to sorcery. When a person dies, they think that he or she has been killed by the evil magic of some ill-wisher, and one of the first things to be done is to discover the culprit in order that his life may be taken in revenge. For this purpose the Narrinyeri resort to a form of divination. On the first night after the death the nearest relation of the deceased sleeps with his head on the corpse, hoping thus to dream of the sorcerer who has done the mischief. Next day the corpse is placed on a sort of bier supported on men's shoulders. The friends of the deceased gather round and call out the names of suspected persons to see whether the corpse will give any sign. At last the next of kin calls out the name of the person of whom he has dreamed, and if at the sound the corpse makes a movement towards him, which the bearers say they cannot resist, it is regarded as a clear token that the man so named is the malefactor. It only remains for the kinsfolk of the dead to hunt down the culprit and kill him.¹⁷⁴ Thus not only the relations but everybody in the neighbourhood has the strongest motive for assuming at least an appearance of sorrow at a death, lest the suspicion of having caused it by sorcery should fall upon him.

      Pretence made by the Narrinyeri of avenging the death of their friends on the guilty sorcerer.

It deserves to be noted, that while the Narrinyeri nominally acknowledged the duty of killing the sorcerer who in their opinion had caused the death of their friend, they by no means always discharged the duty, but sometimes contented themselves with little more than a pretence of revenge. Mr. Taplin's account of the proceedings observed on such an occasion is instructive. It runs thus: "The spirit of the dead is not considered to have been appeased until his relatives have avenged his death. They will kill the sorcerer who has caused it if they can catch him; but generally they cannot catch him, and often do not wish it. Most probably he belongs to some other tribe of the Narrinyeri. Messengers pass between the tribes relative to the affair, and the friends of the accused person at last formally curse the dead man and all his dead relatives. This constitutes a casus belli. Arrangements are forthwith made for a pitched battle, and the two tribes meet in company with their respective allies. The tribe to which the dead man belongs weep and make a great lamentation for him, and the opposing tribe sets some fellows to dance about and play antics in derision of their enemies. Then the whole tribe will set up a great laugh by way of further provocation. If there is any other cause of animosity between the tribes besides the matter of avenging the dead there will now be a pretty severe fight with spears. If, however, the tribes have nothing but the dead man to fight about, they will probably throw a few spears, indulge in considerable abuse of each other, perhaps one or two will get slightly wounded, and then some of the old men will declare that enough has been done. The dead man is considered to have been appeased by the efforts of his friends to avenge his death by fighting, and the two tribes are friendly again. In such a case the fight is a mere ceremony."¹⁷⁵ Thus among the Narrinyeri the duty of blood revenge was often supposed to be sufficiently discharged by a sham fight performed apparently for the satisfaction of the ghost, who was supposed to be looking on and to be gratified by the sight of his friends hurling spears at the author of his death. Merciful pretences of the same sort have been practised by other savages in order to satisfy the vengeful ghost without the effusion of blood. Examples of them will come before us later on.¹⁷⁶

      Magical virtue ascribed to the hair of the dead.

However, the attitude of the Narrinyeri towards their dead was not purely one of fear and aversion. They imagined that they could derive certain benefits from their departed kinsfolk, and the channel through which these benefits flowed was furnished by their hair. They cut off the hair of the dead and spun it into a cord, and this cord was commonly worn by the men as a head-band. They said that thereby they "smelled the dead," and that the smell made their eyes large and their sight keen, so that in a fight they could see the spears coming and could parry or avoid them.¹⁷⁷ Similar magical virtues are ascribed to the hair of the dead by the Arunta. Among them the hair of a dead man is cut off and made into a magic girdle, which is a valued possession and is only worn when a man is going out to engage in a tribal fight or to stalk a foe for the purpose of destroying him by witchcraft. The girdle is supposed to be endowed with magic power and to impart to its possessor all the warlike qualities of the dead man from whose hair it was made; in particular, it is thought to ensure accuracy of aim in the wearer, while at the same time it destroys that of his adversary.¹⁷⁸ Hence the girdle is worn by the man who takes the lead in avenging the death of the deceased on his supposed murderer; the mere sight of it, they think, so terrifies the victim that his legs tremble under him, he becomes incapable of fighting, and is easily speared.¹⁷⁹

      Belief that the souls of the dead go up to the sky.

Among the tribes of South-eastern Australia the Narrinyeri were not alone in holding the curious belief that the souls of the dead go up into the sky to live there for ever, but that their ghosts come down again from time to time, roam about their old haunts on earth, and communicate with the living. This, for example, was the belief of the Dieri, the Buandik, the Kurnai, and the Kulin tribes.¹⁸⁰ The Buandik thought that everything in skyland was better than on earth; a fat kangaroo, for example, was compared to a kangaroo of heaven, where, of course, the animals might be expected to abound.¹⁸¹ The Kulin imagined that the spirits of the dead ascended to heaven by the bright rays of the setting sun.¹⁸² The Wailwun natives in New South Wales used to bury their dead in hollow trees, and when they dropped the body into its place, the bearers and the bystanders joined in