It is no part of my case to deny that mourning garb is ever intended to deceive the ghost. Customs differ so much in different cultural areas that it is quite possible there may be some instances in which the intention is to disguise the mourner by way of precaution against the deceased. Professor Frazer has brought forward two cases, and only two, so far as I am aware, in which this object is avowed. The first is found in the western districts of the island of Timor. When a man dies and before his body is put into a coffin, his wives stand weeping over it with their village gossips, “all with loosened hair, in order to make themselves unrecognizable by the _nitu_ (spirit) of the dead.”[255.2] I have not seen the authority {256} he cites; therefore I do not know whether we are given any information how a widow in these districts habitually wears her hair. For aught that appears here, the hair is loosened only for this ceremony, which comes to an end with the enclosure of the corpse in the coffin, and may not last for more than an hour or two. If so, whatever be the reason for hindering the ghost from identifying the participants, the loosening of the hair may not be, strictly speaking, part of the mourning garb. The other case is a practice occasionally in use among the Herero. When a dying man intimates to one of his relatives and friends, who crowd around him at such a time, that he has “decided upon taking him away after his death,” that is to say, that he will kill him (fetch him to the other world), the person so threatened has recourse to an _onganga_, or witch-doctor. This functionary strips him, washes and greases him afresh, and dresses him in other clothes. “He is now quite at his ease about the threatening of death caused by the deceased; for, says he: ‘Now, our father does not know me.’” The survivors, however, may fulfil the threat.[256.1] This certainly does appear to be a case of disguise, or at least a change of clothes in order to deceive the deceased; but the substituted clothes do not appear to be mourning garb, and the problem of mourning garb is what we are endeavouring to solve.