a great noise to frighten him away, and dismantle his former
habitation of everything that is attractive, and clothe it with
everything that to their ideas seems repulsive."[671]

[Sidenote: Killing a ghost.]

However, stronger measures were sometimes resorted to. It was believed
to be possible to kill a troublesome ghost. Once it happened that many
chiefs feasted in the house of Tanoa, King of Ambau. In the course of
the evening one of them related how he had slain a neighbouring chief.
That very night, having occasion to leave the house, he saw, as he
believed, the ghost of his victim, hurled his club at him, and killed
him stone dead. On his return to the house he roused the king and the
rest of the inmates from their slumbers, and recounted his exploit. The
matter was deemed of high importance, and they all sat on it in solemn
conclave. Next morning a search was made for the club on the scene of
the murder; it was found and carried with great pomp and parade to the
nearest temple, where it was laid up for a perpetual memorial. Everybody
was firmly persuaded that by this swashing blow the ghost had been not
only killed but annihilated.[672]

[Sidenote: Dazing the ghost of a grandfather.]

A more humane method of dealing with an importunate ghost used to be
adopted in Vanua-levu, the largest but one of the Fijian islands. In
that island, as a consequence, it is said, of reckoning kinship through
the mother, a child was considered to be more closely related to his
grandfather than to his father. Hence when a grandfather died, his ghost
naturally desired to carry off the soul of his grandchild with him to
the spirit land. The wish was creditable to the warmth of his domestic
affection, but if the survivors preferred to keep the child with them a
little longer in this vale of tears, they took steps to baffle
grandfather's ghost. For this purpose when the old man's body was
stretched on the bier and raised on the shoulders of half-a-dozen stout
young fellows, the mother's brother would take the grandchild in his
arms and begin running round and round the corpse. Round and round he
ran, and grandfather's ghost looked after him, craning his neck from
side to side and twisting it round and round in the vain attempt to
follow the rapid movements of the runner. When the ghost was supposed to
be quite giddy with this unwonted exercise, the mother's brother made a
sudden dart away with the child in his arms, the bearers fair