In return for this bounty the Spider
gave Death her daughter Yiyisa to wife. So when Death had her for his
wife, he gave her a hint. He said, "Don't walk on the broad road which I
have made. Walk on the footpath which I have not made. When you go to
the water, be sure to take none but the narrow way through the wood."
Well, some time afterwards it had rained a little; the grass was wet,
and Yiyisa wished to go to the watering-place. When she tried to walk on
the narrow path through the forest, the tall damp grass wet her through
and through, so she thought to herself, "In future I will only go on the
broad road." But scarce had she set foot on the beautiful broad road
when she fell into a snare and died on the spot. When Death came to the
snare and saw his wife in it dead, he cut her up into bits and toasted
them on the fire. One day the Spider paid a visit to her son-in-law
Death, and he set a good meal before her. When she had eaten and drunk
her fill and had got up to go home, she asked Death after her daughter.
"If you take that meat from the fire," said Death, "you will see her."
So the Spider took the flesh from the fire and there, sure enough, she
found her dead daughter. Then she went home in great wrath and whetted
her knife till it was so sharp that a fly lighting on the edge was cut
in two. With that knife she came back to attack Death. But Death shot an
arrow at her. She dodged it, and the arrow whizzed past her and set all
the forest on fire. Then the Spider flung her sharp knife at Death, but
it missed him and only sliced off the tops of the palms and all the
other trees of the wood. Seeing that her stroke had failed, the Spider
fled away home and shut herself up in her house. But Death waited for
her on the edge of the town to kill her as soon as she ventured out.
Next morning some women came out of the town to draw water at the
watering-place, and as they went they talked with one another. But Death
shot an arrow among them and killed several. The rest ran away home
and said, "So and so is dead." Then Death came and looked at the bodies
and said, "That is my game. I need go no more into the wood to hunt."
That is how Death came into the world. If the Spider had not done what
she did, nobody would ever have died.[104]

[Sidenote: Death personified in a Melanesian story of the origin of
death.]

Again, the Melanesians of the Banks Islands tell a story of the origin
of Death, in which that grim power is p