in grotesque masks
with long hooked noses. In this costume the maskers jig it as well as
the heavy unwieldy disguise allows them to do. But the dance consists in
little more than running round and round in a circle, with an occasional
hop; the orchestra stands in the middle, singing and thumping drums.
Sometimes two or three of the masked men will make a round of the
village, pelting the men with pebbles or hard fruits, while the women
and children scurry out of their way. When they are not in use the masks
are hidden away in a hut in the forest, which women and children may not
approach. Their secret is sternly kept: any betrayal of it is punished
with death. The season for the exhibition of these masked dances recurs
only once in ten or twelve years, but it extends over a year or
thereabout. During the whole of the dancing-season, curiously enough,
coco-nuts are strictly tabooed; no person may eat them, so that the
unused nuts accumulate in thousands. As coco-nuts ordinarily form a
daily article of diet with the Tami, their prohibition for a year is
felt by the people as a privation. The meaning of the prohibition and
also of the masquerades remains obscure.[476]

[Sidenote: The superhuman beings with whom the Tami are chiefly
concerned are the souls of the dead. Offerings to the dead.]

But while the Tami believe in gods and spirits of various sorts, the
superhuman beings with whom they chiefly concern themselves are the
souls of the dead. On this subject Mr. Bamler writes: "All the spirits
whom we have thus far described are of little importance in the life and
thought of the Tami; they are remembered only on special occasions. The
spirits who fill the thoughts and attract the attention of the Tami are
the _kani_, that is, the souls of the departed. The Tami therefore
practise the worship of ancestors. Yet the memory of ancestors does not
reach far back; people occupy themselves only with the souls of those
relatives whom they have personally known. Hence the worship seldom
extends beyond the grandfather, even when a knowledge of more remote
progenitors survives. An offering to the ancestors takes the form of a
little dish of boiled taro, a cigar, betel-nuts, and the like; but the
spirits partake only of the image or soul of the things offered, while
the material substance falls to the share of mankind. There is no fixed
rule as to the manner or time of the offering. It is left to the caprice
or childlike affection