Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/251

Rh is introduced to the ancestral gods, and is expected to take hold of the palm-leaves with which they are decorated.

The first thought when a person becomes critically ill is to prepare his coffin, a hollowed log closed with a plank. The nearest relatives prepare food for him, and receive his farewell. On the approach of the last moment, the dying man's eldest son lays his mouth against the father's, to receive his spirit, which is believed to come from the mouth in the shape of a pebble. If the man has no son, the spirit is received in the money-purse. It is afterward hung upon the ancestral image which is prepared to represent the deceased, and is supposed to enter it. When received by the son, it is thought to help make him a wise and valiant man. After death, mourning is begun with the beating of drums and the firing of guns, if powder can be got. The nose of the deceased is closed, his chin is bound, and his great toes and his forefingers and thumbs are tied together, to facilitate the escape of the immortal part. A dance, not unlike the marriage-dance, is accompanied by chants reciting that the deceased is not really dead, but is only gone away, although he will never return from beyond the seas to the present world. The funeral feast is marked by the number of swine that are slaughtered for it, and this appears to be the question that most occupies the minds of the public when a death is announced. While the coffin is being brought down into the throng of relatives, some may be inquiring whether there are any circumstances to indicate murder; others may be holding before the deceased articles that he highly prized, in order to outbid any persons hostile to the family who might try to entice his spirit away from them.

A pot of chicken and rice is pushed into the coffin for the use of the deceased in the other world. The coffin having been laid in the grave, the stem of a certain plant is inserted so as to stick up through the surface of the ground and form a way of exit for the mŏkŏmŏkŏ or relic of the heart, which is expected to rise from the grave in the shape of a little spider—this only in case the deceased has left posterity. While the dead are usually buried as soon after death as possible, if the family have not at hand the swine required for a suitable feast the body may be kept in the house, in a tightly-closed coffin, for a year.

Food is set at the foot of the house-thatch twice a day for a few days after the funeral. The idols which the deceased had had made on the occasion of his sickness, and the articles he had used, are placed by the grave, so that the ghost shall not return to the house for them. A wooden image of the deceased is made, and his immortal part is invited by the priest to take its abode in it.

An amusing ceremony is that of the recovery of the