The origin and development of the moral ideas

The transgression of ancestral custom, as we have already seen, is supposed to be punished by the spirits of the dead; and the sacredness of a will largely springs from superstitious fear. The South Slavonian belief that, if a son does not fulfil the last will of his father the soul of the father will curse him from the grave,204 has its counterpart in the denunciatory clause in Anglo-Saxon landbooks, which usually curses all and singular who attack the donee’s title.205

The custom of praising the dead, again, is mainly flattery, and the lamentations over them are not altogether sincere.206 By their excessive demonstrations of grief the Andaman Islanders hope to conciliate the spirits of the departed, and to be preserved from many misfortunes which might otherwise befall them.207 The Central Australian native fears “that, unless a sufficient amount of grief be displayed, he will be harmed by the offended Ulthana or spirit of the dead man.”208 The Angmagsaliks on the East Coast of Greenland say that they cry and groan and perform other mourning rites “in order to prevent the dead from getting angry.”209 But the loud wailing of mourners may also, like the shouting after a death,210 be intended to drive away the ghost, or perhaps death itself.

Fear is certainly a very common motive for funeral and mourning rites which have been interpreted as duties to the dead. This is the case with the various methods of disposing of the corpse. Thus the custom of leaving it as food for beasts of prey211 is, in some instances at least, deliberately practised for the purpose of preventing the ghost from walking. The Herero who accompanied Chapman said of two of their sick comrades who formed part of the company, “You must throw them away, and let the wolves eat them; then they won’t come and bother us.”212 Cremation, also, has frequently been resorted to as a means of protecting the living from unwelcome visits of the dead, or, as the case may be, of effectually getting rid of the contagion of death.213 The Vedic people, while burning the corpses of their dead, cried aloud, “Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons and our men.”214 In Northern India the corpses of all low caste people are either cremated or buried face downwards, in order to prevent the evil spirit from escaping and troubling its neighbours.215 The Nâyars of Malabar not only believe that the collection and careful disposal of the ashes of the dead man gives peace to his spirit, but, “what is more important, the pacified spirit will not thereafter injure the living members of the Taravâd (house or family), cause miscarriage to the women, possess the men, as with an evil spirit, and so on.”216 In Tibet a ghost which makes its presence felt in dreams or by causing deliriousness or temporary insanity is disposed of by cremation.217 In his description of the

Savage Islanders, Mr. Thomson tells us of a mother who destroyed her own daughter’s grave by fire in order to burn the spirit which was afflicting her.218 Among the ancient Scandinavians the bodies of persons who were believed to walk after death were dug up from their graves and burned.219 And exactly the same is done in Albania to this day.220

Burial itself has served a similar purpose.221 According to the Danish traveller Monrad, the Negroes of Accra expressly believe that by covering the body of a dead person with earth they keep the ghost from walking and causing trouble to the survivors; and he adds that exactly the same superstition prevails in Jutland in Denmark.222 This belief is also preserved in the Swedish word for committing a corpse to the earth, jordfästa, which literally means “to fasten to the earth.” In Gothland, in Sweden, there was an old tradition of a man called Takstein who in his lifetime was overbearing and cruel and after his death haunted the living, in consequence of which “a wizard finally earth-fastened him in such a manner that he afterwards lay quiet.”223 But burial has often been supplemented by other precautions against the return of the ghost.

Högström says that the Laplanders carefully wrapped up their dead in cloth so as to prevent the soul from slipping away.224 The practice of placing logs or stones immediately over the corpse may have a similar origin; in some Queensland tribes, when an individual has been killed by the whole tribe in punishment for some serious crime, boomerangs are substituted for the ordinary logs, evidently for fear of the ghost.225 The Chuvashes, again, put two stakes across the coffin of a dead man for the purpose of preventing him from lifting up the cover.226 Graves are often provided with mounds, tombstones, or enclosures in order to keep the dead from walking.227 The Omahas raise no mound over a man who has been killed by lightning, but bury him face downwards and with the soles of his feet split, in the belief that he will then go to the spirit-land without giving further trouble to the living.228 The Savage Islanders pile heavy stones upon the grave to keep the ghost down.229 The Cheremises believe that the ghosts cannot step over the fence-poles with which they surround the graves.230 When ceremonies like that of striking the air at a funeral or the ringing of bells are represented as means of keeping off evil spirits from the dead, we have reason to suspect that their original object was to keep off the ghost from the living.

At Central Australian funerals women beat the air with the palms of their hands for the express purpose of driving the spirit away from the old camp which it is supposed to haunt, and the men beat the air with their spear-throwers.231 The Bondeis of East Africa frighten the ghosts by beating drums.232 And at Port Moresby, in New Guinea, when the church bell was first used, the natives thanked the missionaries for having driven off numerous bands of ghosts.233