Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/291

] that they have killed, or parts of them, at the grave; when the man goes down to Bono, Panoi, the ghosts there will see him come down with these, and think much of him. The Gaua people, however, deny that pigs have ghosts. It is interesting to observe how a judgment upon a dead man's merits was pronounced. Not long ago when a corpse was being buried at Motlav, a man whom the deceased had ill used followed with a stone, and threw it on the body, crying out, 'You have ill used me, and persecuted me to kill me—you have died first.' At Gaua when a great man died his friends would not make it known, lest those whom he had oppressed should come and spit at him after his death, or govgov him, stand bickering at him with crooked fingers and drawing in the lips, by way of curse. Relatives in Motlav watch the grave of a man whose life was bad, lest some man wronged by him should come at night and beat with a stone upon the grave, cursing him. Sometimes the friends will have a sham burial, and hide the grave in which the corpse is really laid; because if a man in his lifetime has had mana to shoot and kill, to charm with the talamatai and in other ways, there will be mana for the same purpose in his corpse; men will want to dig up his bones for arrows and for charms, and his skull to roll the string upon wherewith to tie their talamatai. So at Gaua when a body has been wasted over the fire, they bury the bones in the village under some large stone, and cover it with another stone, lest the ones should be taken up for arrows. At Ureparapara as soon as a man dies his