ave. The ghost clasps the bundle to her breast, thinking it
is her baby, and goes away contentedly to the spirit land. As she walks,
the banana-stalk slips about in the leaves and she imagines it is the
infant stirring; for she has not all her wits about her, ghosts being
naturally in a dazed state at first on quitting their familiar bodies.
But when she arrives in deadland and finds she has been deceived, and
when perhaps some heartless ghosts even jeer at her wooden baby, back
she comes tearing to earth in grief and rage to seek and carry off the
real infant. However, the survivors know what to expect and have taken
the precaution of removing the child to another house where the mother
will never find it; but she keeps looking for it always, and a sad and
angry ghost is she.[578]

[Sidenote: Funeral feasts.]

After the funeral follows a series, sometimes a long series, of funeral
feasts, which form indeed one of the principal institutions of these
islands. The number of the feasts and the length of time during which
they are repeated vary much in the different islands, and depend also on
the consideration in which the deceased was held. The days on which the
feasts are celebrated are the fifth and the tenth after the death, and
afterwards every tenth day up to the hundredth or even it may be, in the
case of a father, a mother, or a wife, up to the thousandth day. These
feasts appear now to be chiefly commemorative, but they also benefit the
dead; for the ghost is naturally gratified by seeing that his friends
remember him and do their duty by him so handsomely. At these banquets
food is put aside for the dead with the words "This is for thee." The
practice of thus setting aside food for the ghost at a series of funeral
feasts appears at first sight, as Dr. Codrington observes, inconsistent
with the theory that the ghosts live underground.[579] But the objection
thus suggested is rather specious than real; for we must always bear in
mind that, to judge from the accounts given of them in all countries,
ghosts experience no practical difficulty in obtaining temporary leave
of absence from the other world and coming to this one, so to say, on
furlough for the purpose of paying a surprise visit to their sorrowing
friends and relations. The thing is so well known that it would be at
once superfluous and tedious to illustrate it at length; many examples
have incidentally met us in the course of these lectures.

[Sidenote: