Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/218

196 engaged. The mane kisu knows certain herbs, and warms them in a cocoa-nut shell over the fire; the steam applied to the patient drives away the pain or the disease. For cough an infusion is drunk, the leaves being thrown away. The doctors also practise massage, kneading, squeezing, and rubbing the body and limbs of the patient. In Ysabel (and no doubt also in Florida) the doctor called in will discover the tindatho who causes the complaint he has to treat, by suspending a stone or heavy ornament at the end of a string which he holds in his hand, and calling over the names of the lately deceased; when the name of him who causes the disease is called the stone swings in answer. Then it remains to ask what shall be given to appease the anger of the ghost—a mash of yams, a fish, a pig, a man. The answer is given in the same way; whatever is desired is offered on the dead man's grave, and the sickness goes.

In Wango in San Cristoval the natives not long ago believed that the ghosts, there called 'adaro, actually fought with one another over the sick with spears. A man would have a grudge against another, and pay a wizard to bring an 'adaro to 'eat' him, to do him mischief. It would become known that he had given a pig, as it might be, to that wizard, and the man whose life was aimed at, or his friends, would go to another wizard, and by a larger fee secure as they hoped a stronger 'adaro for their side. The two ghosts would fight it out, or probably more than one would be engaged on either side; the man would sicken, die, or keep his health, according to the issue of the unseen battle. Ghosts that haunt the sea are believed to shoot men on the reefs or in canoes with fish darted at them invisibly; or if, as often happens, a flying-fish or gar-fish springs from the waves and strikes a man, they say that an 'adaro shoots it: it is no common fish, the man will die. Sick persons are commonly treated with ginger and other roots and leaves, and with water over which a charm has been muttered to give it healing power from an 'adaro.

In Santa Cruz the cause of sickness is an offended duka, ghost or spirit, and the doctor called in is a mendeka, a man