TRANSFORMATION 183 



pass into fireflies. 1 On Ulawa, another of the same 

 group of islands, "a man of much influence not long 

 ago forbade the eating of the banana after his death, 

 saying that the banana would represent him, that he 

 would be in the banana." This is stated to be the 

 origin of a taboo recently laid on bananas. " The 

 practice at Ulawa is illustrated by what is common 

 at Saa, in Malanta. A man before his death will say 

 that after he dies he will be a shark. When he is dead 

 the people will look out for the appearance of some re- 

 markable shark" and identify it with the deceased. 

 Certain food, cocoa-nuts for example, will be reserved 

 to feed it. 2 A story of the islanders of Mabuiag in 

 Torres Straits presents a metamorphosis comparable 

 to some of Ovid's. Certain men being clubbed to 

 death were transformed into flying foxes (that is, fruit- 

 eating bats) and flew away. They were however 

 afterwards retransformed by being caught and their 

 heads bitten off, as in European nursery tales the 

 transformed hero is frequently delivered from his 

 enchantment by having his head cut off. 3 In the 

 Murray Islands " the ghost of one about to die or of a 

 recently deceased person usually appeared to the living 

 in the form of some animal. A kingfisher may appear 

 for any one, but there are certain animals that appear 

 at the death of members of particular groups of indi- 

 viduals, the idea evidently being that the ghost of a 



1 Guppy, 54. 



2 Codrington, /. A. I. xviii. 310. In the Karesau Islands off the 

 coast of Dutch New Guinea a dying man not long ago said he wpuld 

 come back as a star with a bird of paradise on his head. The 

 fulfilment of the promise was apparently a comet (W. Schmidt, 

 Anthropos. ii. 1051 note). 



Haddon Torres Str. Expect, v. 90. 



