Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/450

 4o8 The Principles of Fasting.

in each case, a similar fear lest the unclean mourner should pollute the whole species by polluting some individual member of it would be found to be a common cause of those rules which prohibit the eating of staple or favourite food.^ But it would seem that such rules also may spring from the idea that this kind of food is particularly sought for by the dead and therefore defiled. Moreover, unclean individuals are not only a danger to others, but are themselves in danger. As Dr. Frazer has shown, they are supposed to be in a delicate condition, which imposes upon them various precautions ; ^ and one of these may be restrictions in their diet. Among the Thlinkets and some peoples in British Columbia the relatives of the deceased not only fast till the body is buried, but have their faces blackened, cover their heads with ragged mats, and must speak but little, confining themselves to answering questions, as it is believed that they would else become chatterboxes.^ According to early ideas, mourners are in a state very similar to that of girls at puberty, who also, among various peoples, are obliged to fast or abstain from certain kinds of food on account of their uncleanness.* Among the Stlatlumh,

^ In the Arunta tribe. Central Australia, no menstruous woman is allowed to gather the Iniakura bulbs, which form a staple article of diet for both men and women, the idea being that any infringement of the re- striction would result in the failure of the supply of the bulb (Spencer and Gillan, Northern 'J'ri'oes of Central Australia, p. 615).

^Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 343, etc. ^Boas, loc. cit. p. 41.

[otir. Anthr. Inst, xxxiv. 33 (Siciatl). Sproat, Scenes atid Studies of Savage Life, p. 93 sq. (Ahts). Bourke, ' Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in Ann. Eep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 501. Du Tertre, Histoire generale des Antilles, ii. 371. Schomburgk, 'Natives of Guiana,' va. Jour. Ethn. Soc. London, i. 269 sq. von Martius, Beitrdge zur Ethnografhie A7nerikd!s, i. 644 (Macusis). Seligmann, in Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, v. 200 sqq. (Western Islanders). Man, ' Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,' vsx Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 94. See Frazer, op. cit. iii. 205 sqq.
 * Boas, loc. cit. p. 40 sqq. (various tribes in British Columbia). Tout, in