第69章 GRAVEYARD STORIES(5)

And first from Tahiti.A man went to visit the husband of his sister,then some time dead.In her life the sister had been dainty in the island fashion,and went always adorned with a coronet of flowers.In the midst of the night the brother awoke and was aware of a heavenly fragrance going to and fro in the dark house.The lamp I must suppose to have burned out;no Tahitian would have lain down without one lighted.A while he lay wondering and delighted;then called upon the rest.'Do none of you smell flowers?'he asked.'O,'said his brother-in-law,'we are used to that here.'The next morning these two men went walking,and the widower confessed that his dead wife came about the house continually,and that he had even seen her.She was shaped and dressed and crowned with flowers as in her lifetime;only she moved a few inches above the earth with a very easy progress,and flitted dryshod above the surface of the river.And now comes my point:

It was always in a back view that she appeared;and these brothers-in-law,debating the affair,agreed that this was to conceal the inroads of corruption.

Now for the Samoan story.I owe it to the kindness of Dr.F.Otto Sierich,whose collection of folk-tales I expect with a high degree of interest.A man in Manu'a was married to two wives and had no issue.He went to Savaii,married there a third,and was more fortunate.When his wife was near her time he remembered he was in a strange island,like a poor man;and when his child was born he must be shamed for lack of gifts.It was in vain his wife dissuaded him.He returned to his father in Manu'a seeking help;and with what he could get he set off in the night to re-embark.

Now his wives heard of his coming;they were incensed that he did not stay to visit them;and on the beach,by his canoe,intercepted and slew him.Now the third wife lay asleep in Savaii;-her babe was born and slept by her side;and she was awakened by the spirit of her husband.'Get up,'he said,'my father is sick in Manu'a and we must go to visit him.''It is well,'said she;'take you the child,while I carry its mats.''I cannot carry the child,'said the spirit;'I am too cold from the sea.'When they were got on board the canoe the wife smelt carrion.'How is this?'she said.'What have you in the canoe that I should smell carrion?'

'It is nothing in the canoe,'said the spirit.'It is the land-wind blowing down the mountains,where some beast lies dead.'It appears it was still night when they reached Manu'a -the swiftest passage on record -and as they entered the reef the bale-fires burned in the village.Again she asked him to carry the child;but now he need no more dissemble.'I cannot carry your child,'said he,'for I am dead,and the fires you see are burning for my funeral.'

The curious may learn in Dr.Sierich's book the unexpected sequel of the tale.Here is enough for my purpose.Though the man was but new dead,the ghost was already putrefied,as though putrefaction were the mark and of the essence of a spirit.The vigil on the Paumotuan grave does not extend beyond two weeks,and they told me this period was thought to coincide with that of the resolution of the body.The ghost always marked with decay -the danger seemingly ending with the process of dissolution -here is tempting matter for the theorist.But it will not do.The lady of the flowers had been long dead,and her spirit was still supposed to bear the brand of perishability.The Resident had been more than a fortnight buried,and his vampire was still supposed to go the rounds.

Of the lost state of the dead,from the lurid Mangaian legend,in which infernal deities hocus and destroy the souls of all,to the various submarine and aerial limbos where the dead feast,float idle,or resume the occupations of their life on earth,it would be wearisome to tell.One story I give,for it is singular in itself,is well-known in Tahiti,and has this of interest,that it is post-Christian,dating indeed from but a few years back.A princess of the reigning house died;was transported to the neighbouring isle of Raiatea;fell there under the empire of a spirit who condemned her to climb coco-palms all day and bring him the nuts;was found after some time in this miserable servitude by a second spirit,one of her own house;and by him,upon her lamentations,reconveyed to Tahiti,where she found her body still waked,but already swollen with the approaches of corruption.It is a lively point in the tale that,on the sight of this dishonoured tabernacle,the princess prayed she might continue to be numbered with the dead.

But it seems it was too late,her spirit was replaced by the least dignified of entrances,and her startled family beheld the body move.The seemingly purgatorial labours,the helpful kindred spirit,and the horror of the princess at the sight of her tainted body,are all points to be remarked.

The truth is,the tales are not necessarily consistent in themselves;and they are further darkened for the stranger by an ambiguity of language.Ghosts,vampires,spirits,and gods are all confounded.And yet I seem to perceive that (with exceptions)those whom we would count gods were less maleficent.Permanent spirits haunt and do murder in corners of Samoa;but those legitimate gods of Upolu and Savaii,whose wars and cricketings of late convulsed society,I did not gather to be dreaded,or not with a like fear.The spirit of Aana that ate souls is certainly a fearsome inmate;but the high gods,even of the archipelago,seem helpful.Mahinui -from whom our convict-catechist had been named -the spirit of the sea,like a Proteus endowed with endless avatars,came to the assistance of the shipwrecked and carried them ashore in the guise of a ray fish.The same divinity bore priests from isle to isle about the archipelago,and by his aid,within the century,persons have been seen to fly.The tutelar deity of each isle is likewise helpful,and by a particular form of wedge-shaped cloud on the horizon announces the coming of a ship.

To one who conceives of these atolls,so narrow,so barren,so beset with sea,here would seem a superfluity of ghostly denizens.

And yet there are more.In the various brackish pools and ponds,beautiful women with long red hair are seen to rise and bathe;only (timid as mice)on the first sound of feet upon the coral they dive again for ever.They are known to be healthy and harmless living people,dwellers of an underworld;and the same fancy is current in Tahiti,where also they have the hair red.TETEA is the Tahitian name;the Paumotuan,MOKUREA.