(M210) The custom of abstaining from all mention of the names of the dead was observed in antiquity by the Albanians of the Caucasus,(1317) and at the present day it is in full force among many savage tribes. Thus we are told that one of the customs most rigidly observed and enforced amongst the Australian aborigines is never to mention the name of a deceased person, whether male or female; to name aloud one who has departed this life would be a gross violation of their most sacred prejudices, and they carefully abstain from it.(1318) The chief motive for this abstinence appears to be a fear of evoking the ghost, although the natural unwillingness to revive past sorrows undoubtedly operates also to draw the veil of oblivion over the names of the dead.(1319) Once Mr. Oldfield so terrified a native by shouting out the name of a deceased person, that the man fairly took to his heels and did not venture to shew himself again for several days. At their next meeting he bitterly reproached the rash white man for his indiscretion; “nor could I,” adds Mr. Oldfield, “induce him by any means to utter the awful sound of a dead man’s name, for by so doing he would have placed himself in the power of the malign spirits.”(1320) On another occasion, a Watchandie woman having mentioned the name of a certain man, was informed that he had long been dead. At that she became greatly excited and spat thrice to counteract the evil effect of having taken a dead man’s name into her lips. This custom of spitting thrice, as Mr. Oldfield afterwards learned, was the regular charm whereby the natives freed themselves from the power of the dangerous spirits whom they had provoked by such a rash act.(1321) Among the aborigines of Victoria the dead were very rarely spoken of, and then never by their names; they were referred to in a subdued voice as “the lost one” or “the poor fellow that is no more.” To speak of them by name would, it was supposed, excite the malignity of Couit-gil, the spirit of the departed, which hovers on earth for a time before it departs for ever towards the setting sun.(1322) Once when a Kurnai man was spoken to about a dead friend, soon after the decease, he looked round uneasily and said, “Do not do that, he might hear you and kill me!”(1323) If a Kaiabara black dies, his tribes-people never mention his name, but call him _Wurponum_, “the dead,” and in order to explain who it is that has died, they speak of his father, mother, brothers, and so forth.(1324) Of the tribes on the Lower Murray River we are told that when a person dies “they carefully avoid mentioning his name; but if compelled to do so, they pronounce it in a very low whisper, so faint that they imagine the spirit cannot hear their voice.”(1325) Amongst the tribes of Central Australia no one may utter the name of the deceased during the period of mourning, unless it is absolutely necessary to do so, and then it is only done in a whisper for fear of disturbing and