like a living person. In course of time it became almost
completely mummified and as light as if it were made of paper. Swinging
to and fro with every breath of wind, it turned its gleaming eyes at
each movement of the head. The hut was now surrounded by posts and ropes
to prevent the ghost from making his way into it and taking possession
of his old body. Ghosts were supposed to appear only at night, and it
was imagined that in the dark they would stumble against the posts and
entangle themselves in the ropes, till in despair they desisted from the
attempt to penetrate into the hut. In time the mummy mouldered away and
fell to pieces. If the deceased was a male, the head was removed and a
wax model of it made and given to the brother, whether blood or tribal
brother, of the dead man. The head thus prepared or modelled in wax,
with eyes of pearl-shell, was used in divination. The decaying remains
of the body were taken to the beach and placed on a platform supported
by four posts. That was their last resting-place.[308]

[Sidenote: General summary. Dramas of the dead.]

To sum up the foregoing evidence, we may say that if the beliefs and
practices of the Torres Straits Islanders which I have described do not
amount to a worship of the dead, they contain the elements out of which
such a worship might easily have been developed. The preservation of the
bodies of the dead, or at least their skulls, in the houses, and the
consultation of them as oracles, prove that the spirits of the dead are
supposed to possess knowledge which may be of great use to the living;
and the custom suggests that in other countries the images of the gods
may perhaps have been evolved out of the mummies of the dead. Further,
the dramatic representation of the ghosts in a series of striking and
impressive performances indicates how a sacred and in time a secular
drama may elsewhere have grown out of a purely religious celebration
concerned with the souls of the departed. In this connexion we are
reminded of Professor Ridgeway's theory that ancient Greek tragedy
originated in commemorative songs and dances performed at the tomb for
the purpose of pleasing and propitiating the ghost of the mighty
dead.[309] Yet the mortuary dramas of the Torres Straits Islanders can
hardly be adduced to support that theory by analogy so long as we are
ignorant of the precise significance which the natives themselves
attached to these remarkable performances. There i