The taboo restrictions imposed upon persons whose contact with the dead
is to be understood in the transferred sense, namely the mourning
relatives such as widows and widowers, are essentially the same as those
mentioned above, but they are of greater interest for the point we are
trying to make. In the rules hitherto mentioned we see only the typical
expression of the virulence and power of diffusion of the taboo; in
those about to be cited we catch a gleam of the motives, including both
the ostensible ones and those which may be regarded as the underlying
and genuine motives.
Among the Shuswap in British-Columbia widows and widowers have to
remain segregated during their period of mourning; they must not use
their hands to touch the body or the head and all utensils used by them
must not be used by any one else. No hunter will want to approach the
hut in which such mourners live, for that would bring misfortune; if the
shadow of one of the mourners should fall on him he would become ill.
The mourners sleep on thorn bushes, with which they also surround their
beds. This last precaution is meant to keep off the spirit of the
deceased; plainer still is the reported custom of other North American
tribes where the widow, after the death of her husband, has to wear a
kind of trousers of dried grass in order to make herself inaccessible to
the approach of the spirit. Thus it is quite obvious that touching ‘in
the transferred sense’ is after all understood only as bodily contact,
since the spirit of the deceased does not leave his kin and does not
desist from ‘hovering about them’, during the period of mourning.
Among the Agutainos, who live on Palawan, one of the Philippine Islands,
a widow may not leave her hut for the first seven or eight days after
her husband’s death, except at night, when she need not expect
encounters. Whoever sees her is in danger of immediate death and
therefore she herself warns others of her approach by hitting the trees
with a wooden stick with every step she takes; these trees all wither.
Another observation explains the nature of the danger inherent in a
widow. In the district of Mekeo, British New Guinea, a widower forfeits
all civil rights and lives like an outlaw. He may not tend a garden, or
show himself in public, or enter the village or go on the street. He
slinks about like an animal, in the high grass or in the bushes, and
must hide in a thicket if he sees anybody, especially a woman,
approaching. This last hint makes it easy for us to trace back the
danger of the widower or widow to the danger of temptation. The husband
who has lost his wife must evade the desire for a substitute; the widow
has to contend with the same wish, and beside this, she may arouse the
desire of other men because she is without a master. Every such
satisfaction through a substitute runs contrary to the intention of
mourning and would cause the anger of the spirit to flare up[69].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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