Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/382

348 The Bird Cult of Easter Island. for a year, five months of which were spent in strict taboo. The egg which was still kept on tappa was hung up inside the house and blown on the third day, a morsel of tapa being put inside. The victor did not wash and spent his time in "sleeping all day, only coming out to sit in the shade." His correct head-dress was a crown made of human hair; it was known as "hau oho," and if it was not worn the "spirits would be angry."

The house was divided into two, the other half being occupied by a man, who was called an iviatua, but was of an inferior type from the one gifted with prophecy and apparently merely a poor relation of the hero; there were two cooking places, as even he might not share that of the Bird-man. Food was brought as gifts, especially the first sugar-cane, and these offerings seem to have been the sole practical advantage of victory; those who did not contribute were apt to have their houses burnt. The Bird-man's wife came to Raraku but dwelt apart, as for the first five months she could not enter her husband's house nor he hers on pain of death. A few yards below the bird-house is an "ahu" or burial place; it consists merely of a low rough wall built into the mountain with the ground above levelled and paved; it was reserved for the burial of bird-men; corpses in Easter Island were frequently exposed, not buried, but a bird-man was an uncanny person whose ghost might do unpleasant things, he was safer hidden under stones. The name Orohié is given to the whole of this corner of the mountain with its houses, its ahu and its statues. As the Bird-man gazed lazily forth from the shade of his house there stretched away in front of him the low rocky coast marked by a white line of surf and ending in the swelling side and precipitous cliff of Rano Kao, the scene of his triumph. Above him, as he sat there, were the quarries with their unfinished work, below him were the bones of his dead predecessors, while on every hand giant images stood