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CHAPTER V. 



MAGICO-RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES AND BELIEFS. 



1. Dreadful Beings; Spirits; Sorcery. 



Fear of Darkness.. — It is important to study not only the 

 ideas of the natives concerning ghosts and spirits, but also 

 their emotional reactions towards such ideas — not only how 

 they picture in their minds beneficent or maleficent beings, but 

 how they behave, and emotionally comport themselves, towards 

 these imaginary beings which to them are so real. 



Of the natives of Mailu it may be emphatically stated that 

 they hold in great fear the terrors lurking in the shadows of 

 night. Nothing would induce a man to venture out alone at 

 night, even for a few hundred yards from the village. I ob- 

 served that at dusk the men became very nervous and hastened 

 towards the village, so that darkness should not overtake them 

 when alone in the gardens. One of the oldest and wisest men 

 in the village — in fact, the greatest authority on native lore 

 and custom — Papdri, was quite as unprepared for such risks 

 as any of the boys and young men. I offered to some young 

 men who had been much influenced by the white man's teach- 

 ings the, to them, large reward of ten sticks of tobacco if they 

 would walk alone at night about a quarter of a mile from the 

 village to the Mission Station, but they smilingly declined the 

 offer. Their fear is greater on a dark than on a moonlit 

 night, and they are also afraid of darkness in their houses; 

 hence the custom of keeping the fire going during the night. 

 If a man has to leave a house in the night to satisfy a necessity 

 of nat'ire, he arouses another T^erson to keep him crmpany 

 on his walk to the garden or to the seashore, a statement which 

 is confirmed by Mr. Greenaway, who has lived for a long time 

 amongst and with the natives. 



I believe that in this respect the natives of Mailu do not 

 differ from the other Western P?puo-Melanesians, all of whom 

 share this intense dread of darkness. On the other hand, 

 it is interesting to note that the general fear of the night is 

 not an essential characteristic of this stage of culture or even 

 of this type of human society, for among the Northern Massim 

 of Mviu'a (Woodlark Island) I found an entirely different 

 state of things, the men volunteering quite readily to go alone 

 at night for long distances out of the village. 



XaUire of the Dreaded B pings; the Bard'u. — Returning 

 to the Mailu, the next problem is of what kind of maleficent 

 I)eings are the natives afraid ? We modern Europeans are so 

 accustomed to associate all dreadful things definitely with the 

 idea of death, to treat them as ghosts, visitors from the other 



