Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/49

Rh the details of the shadowy afterlife. If custom decree that the bow and arrow of the brave be left with him in his last resting-place, at first it will be merely because they are taboo, but later on it will be because he seems still to need them; moreover the place where he uses them must have animals that he can shoot; and an idea of the Happy Hunting Grounds takes shape. The Wolgal of Australia, buried with his nets and canoe, uses them in the world beyond the sky where there is no dearth of navigable rivers. So, too, if the soul of the Algonquin be equipped with the soul of his spear and of his snowshoes, he will hunt hereafter the soul of the elk as it roams on the soul of the snow.

The custom of breaking the property thus abandoned may be variously explained. It may have originated in the desire to circumvent the thievish instincts of grave-robbers; or in the fear that if the thief were a clansman, taboo would recoil on his folk; or it may have been a rite de séparation, symbolic of the functionless nature of death; of the bowl of life that is broken, the silver cord that is loosed.

It is not immediately obvious how the food, so often provided for the long journey, could have been included at first in the category of personal belongings. Yet we have some grounds for thinking that it was originally food belonging to the dead, or especially associated with him, that became taboo with his death, and shared the fate of his other property. Thus M. Junod tells us of the Bathonga that it is some of the dead man's own corn that is buried with him, and what remains is subject to desacralising ceremonies before it can be eaten. His very gardens must be purified; while in New Caledonia, not only are his houses, his nets and his other imple-