NATIVE CUSTOMS 47 



world, it was to present to his horrified mother a visage 

 surmounted by two large protuberances like hen's eggs — and 

 indeed eggs had been much in her mind of late. But he was 

 covered up and ignored, and the mother's ruse succeeded : for 

 her next look at her babe revealed only the rounded scalp and 

 puckered red face common to all new-born babies. Other 

 instances too are quoted in the islands, and cases of webbed 

 fingers and clubbed feet seem easily amenable to this 

 treatment. 



Little children die — even on coral islands this cannot be 

 prevented — and evil spirits are mostly at the bottom of it, and 

 the knowledge of the influence of the spirits gives origin to a 

 very curious custom. A woman who has had the misfortune 

 to lose her baby suspects that the devil has a design upon her 

 and her offspring — and a continuance of her trials only con- 

 firms her suspicions. If child after child is born only to die 

 of infantile complaints, she knows that it has been decreed by 

 the evil one that she shall not rear her baby, and so when next 

 a child is born to her she pretends that it is not hers and places 

 it in the road where some one is sure to see it before long. 



The expected happens, for some other woman passing by 

 sees the bundle, and, knowing the meaning of its presence, 

 picks it up and carries the baby to her house. She mixes the 

 child among her own children, and cares for it, and pretends 

 that it is hers ; and in this way the devil loses sight of the 

 child and lets it grow up, forgetting that it is the offspring of 

 a mother upon whom his curse was set. 



The same idea underlies the custom which is prevalent in 

 the islands of changing altogether the name by which a man 

 has always been known, after he has recovered from a serious 

 illness. A man who is smitten with a great sickness, and has 

 been near to death, feels that it would be unlucky to rise 

 from his bed still bearing the name by which the spirits knew 

 him when such ill-fortune befell him, and so he takes a new 

 name when he recovers ; and goes a-mong his fellow men 

 known by a different title from that under which he passed 

 when he was smitten. 



