Their law compels the widow, through the long term of her weeds, to refrain all public company and diversions, at the penalty of an adulteress; {186} and likewise to go with flowing hair, without the privilege of oil to anoint it. The nearest kinsmen of the deceased husband, keep a very watchful eye over her conduct, in this respect. The place of interment is also calculated to wake the widow’s grief, for he is intombed in the house under her bed. And if he was a war-leader, she is obliged for the first moon, to sit in the day-time under his mourning war-pole[XLIX], which is decked with all his martial trophies, and must be heard to cry with bewailing notes. But none of them are fond of that month’s supposed religious duty, it chills, or sweats, and wastes them so exceedingly; for they are allowed no shade, or shelter. This sharp rigid custom excites the women to honour the marriage-state, and keeps them obliging to their husbands, by anticipating the visible sharp difficulties which they must undergo for so great a loss. The three or four years monastic life, which she lives after his death, makes it her interest to strive by every means, to keep in his lamp of life, be it ever so dull and worthless; if she is able to shed tears on such an occasion, they often proceed from self-love. We can generally distinguish between the widow’s natural mourning voice, and her tuneful laboured strain. She doth not so much bewail his death, as her own recluse life, and hateful state of celibacy; which to many of them, is an uneligible, as it was to the Hebrew ladies, who preferred death before the unmarried state, and reckoned their virginity a bewailable condition, like the state of the dead. Footnote XLIX: The war-pole is a small peeled tree painted red, the top and boughs cut off short: it is fixt in the ground opposite to his door, and all his implements of war, are hung on the short boughs of it, till they rot. The Choktah Indians hire mourners to magnify the merit and loss of their dead, and if their tears cannot be seen to flow, their shrill voices will be heard to cry, which answers the solemn chorus a great deal better[L]. However, they are no way churlish of their tears, for I have seen them, on the occasion, pour them out, like fountains of water: but after having {187} thus tired themselves, they might with equal propriety have asked by-standers in the manner of the native Irish, Ara ci fuar bass—“And who is dead?” Footnote L: Jer. ix. 17. 19. Thus saith the Lord of hosts: consider ye, and call for the mourning-women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come. For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, how are we spoiled? we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings have cast us out.