Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/287

] the Mota atai, nete. The departed soul goes down to Panoi near a rock called Vat tugua, not far from Lo, where a very ancient casuarina-tree growing at high-water mark overhangs the sea, and endures the heaviest storms and highest tides unmoved. In these islands the practice has prevailed of laying out the bodies of the dead on stages near the houses, to putrefy and decay; but they now begin to bury.

The story of the Origin of Death noticed in the account of Saa (page 260), has its parallel in the Banks' Islands and again in the New Hebrides. At first men never died, but when they advanced in life they cast their skins like snakes and crabs, and came out with youth renewed. After a time a woman growing old went to a stream to change her skin; according to some she was the mother of Qat, according to others Ul-ta-marama, Change-skin of the world. She threw off her old skin in the water, and observed that as it floated down it caught against a stick. Then she went home, where she had left her child. The child, however, refused to recognize her, crying that its mother was an old woman not like this young stranger; and to pacify the child she went after her cast integument and put it on. From that time mankind ceased to cast their skins and died. In another Banks' Island story this woman is Iro Puget, Bird's-nest Fern, the wife of Mate, Death. There are many others. In one the cause of the introduction of Death was the inconvenience of the permanence of property in the same hands while men changed their skins and lived for ever. Qat therefore sent for Mate, who dwelt in Panoi, or by the side of a volcanic vent in Santa Maria, and assured him that he would only have to go to Vanua Lava and not be hurt. Death therefore came forth; they laid him on a board, killed a pig, and covered him over; then they proceeded to divide his property