ke to relax
his clutch on the sick man, it may be a mash of yams, a fish, a pig, or
perhaps a human substitute. The question is put and answered as before;
and whatever the oracle declares to be requisite is offered on the dead
man's grave. Thus the ghost is appeased and the sufferer is made
whole.[614] In these islands a common cause of illness is believed to be
an unwarrantable intrusion on premises occupied by a ghost, who punishes
the trespasser by afflicting him with bodily pains and ailments, or it
may be by carrying off his soul. At Maewo in Aurora, one of the New
Hebrides, when there is reason to think that a sickness is due to
ghostly agency, the friends of the sick man send for a professional
dreamer, whose business it is to ascertain what particular ghost has
been offended and to make it up with him. So the dreamer falls asleep
and in his sleep he dreams a dream. He seems to himself to be in the
place where the patient was working before his illness; and there he
spies a queer little old man, who is really no other than the ghost. The
dreamer falls into conversation with him, learns his name, and winning
his confidence extracts from him a true account of the whole affair. The
fact is that in working at his garden the man encroached, whether
wittingly or not is no matter, on land which the ghost regards as his
private preserve; and to punish the intrusion the ghost carried off the
intruder's soul and impounded it in a magic fence in his garden, where
it still languishes in durance vile. The dreamer at once tenders a frank
and manly apology on behalf of his client; he assures the ghost that the
trespass was purely inadvertent, that no personal disrespect whatever
was intended, and he concludes by requesting the ghost to overlook the
offence for this time and to release the imprisoned soul. This appeal to
the better feelings of the ghost has its effect; he pulls up the fence
and lets the soul out of the pound; it flies back to the sick man, who
thereupon recovers. Sometimes an orphan child is made sick by its dead
mother, whose ghost draws away the soul of the infant to keep her
company in the spirit land. In such a case, again, a dreamer is employed
to bring back the lost soul from the far country; and if he can persuade
the mother's ghost to relinquish the tiny soul of her baby, the child
will be made whole.[615] Once more certain long stones in the Banks'
Islands are inhabited by ghosts so active and robust tha