vering over the fire, a
little fire will be kept up for a time at the foot of the grave in order
to warm his homeless spirit.[447] The widow or widower has to discharge
the disagreeable duty of living day and night for several weeks in a
hovel built directly over the grave. Not unfrequently the lot of a widow
is much harder. At her own request she is sometimes strangled and buried
with her husband in the grave, in order that her soul may accompany his
on the journey to the other world. The other relations have no interest
in encouraging the woman to sacrifice herself, rather the contrary; but
if she insists they fear to balk her, lest they should offend the ghost
of her husband, who would punish them in many ways for keeping his wife
from him. But even such voluntary sacrifices, if we may believe Mr. Ch.
Keysser, are dictated rather by a selfish calculation than by an impulse
of disinterested affection. He mentions the case of a man named Jabu,
both of whose wives chose thus to attend their husband in death. The
deceased was an industrious man, a skilful hunter and farmer, who
provided his wives with abundance of food. As such men are believed to
work hard also in the other world, tilling fields and killing game just
as here, the widows thought they could not do better than follow him as
fast as possible to the spirit land, since they had no prospect of
getting such another husband here on earth. "How firmly convinced," adds
the missionary admiringly, "must these people be of the reality of
another world when they sacrifice their earthly existence, not for the
sake of a better life hereafter, but merely in order to be no worse off
there than they have been on earth." And he adds that this consideration
explains why no man ever chooses to be strangled at the death of his
wife. The labour market in the better land is apparently not recruited
from the ranks of women.[448]

[Sidenote: House or village deserted after a death.]

The house in which anybody has died is deserted, because the ghost of
the dead is believed to haunt it and make it unsafe at night. If the
deceased was a chief or a man of importance, the whole village is
abandoned and a new one built on another site.[449]

[Footnote 415: Stefan Lehner, "Bukaua," in R. Neuhauss's _Deutsch
Neu-Guinea_, iii. (Berlin, 1911) pp. 395-485.]

[Footnote 416: S. Lehner, _op. cit._ pp. 399, 433 _sq._, 437 _sqq._]

[Footnote 417: S. Lehner, _op. cit._ p. 399.]

[Footnote 4