(M223) Among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait the first child born in a village after some one has died receives the dead person’s name, and must represent him in subsequent festivals which are given in his honour. The day before the great feast of the dead the nearest male relative of the deceased goes to the grave and plants before it a stake bearing the crest or badge of the departed. This is the notice served to the ghost to attend the festival. Accordingly he returns from the spirit-land to the grave. Afterwards a song is sung at the grave inviting the ghost to repair to the assembly-house, where the people are gathered to celebrate the festival. The shade accepts the invitation and takes his place, with the other ghosts, in the fire-pit under the floor of the assembly-house. All the time of the festival, which lasts for several days, lamps filled with seal-oil are kept burning day and night in the assembly-house in order to light up the path to the spirit-land and enable the ghosts to find their way back to their old haunts on earth. When the spirits of the dead are gathered in the pit, and the proper moment has come, they all rise up through the floor and enter the bodies of their living namesakes. Offerings of food, drink, and clothes are now made to these namesakes, who eat and drink and wear the clothes on behalf of the ghosts. Finally, the shades, refreshed and strengthened by the banquet, are sent away back to their graves thinly clad in the spiritual essence of the clothes, while the gross material substance of the garments is retained by their namesakes.(1398) Here the reincarnation of the dead in the living is not permanent, but merely occasional and temporary. Still a special connexion may well be thought to subsist at all times between the deceased and the living person who bears his or her name. (M224) The foregoing facts seem to render it probable that even where a belief in the reincarnation of ancestors either is not expressly attested or has long ceased to form part of the popular creed, many of the solemnities which attend the naming of children may have sprung originally from the widespread notion that the souls of the dead come to life again in their namesakes.(1399)