setting the
traps was this. If a person was very sick or had given offence to a
sorcerer, the offended wizard or priest would hang a soul-trap by night
from a branch of a tree overhanging the house of the sufferer or of the
person against whom he bore a grudge; then sitting down beside the snare
he would pretend to watch for the flight of the victim's spirit. If the
family enquired the sin for which the soul-trap had been set, the holy
man would probably allege some ceremonial fault committed by the sick
man against the gods. If an insect or small bird chanced to fly through
one of the loops, the priest would allege that the man's soul was caught
in the mesh, and that there was no hope for it but that the wretch must
die. In that case the demon Vaerua, who presided over the spirit-world,
was believed to hurry off the poor soul to the nether world, there to
feast upon it. The news that So-and-so had lost his soul would then
spread through the island, and great would be the lamentation. The
friends of the unhappy man would seek to propitiate the sorcerer by
large presents of food, begging him to intercede with the dread Vaerua
for the restoration of the lost soul. Sometimes the intercessions were
successful, and the patient recovered; but at other times the priest
reported that his prayers were of no avail, and that Vaerua could not
be induced to send back the soul to re-inhabit the body. The melancholy
tidings acted like a sentence of death. The patient gave up all hope and
soon pined away through sheer distress at the thought of his soul caught
in the trap.[42]

[42] W. W. Gill, _Life in the Southern Isles_, pp. 180-183;
_id._, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, p. 171.

Sec. 6. _Death and Funeral Rites_

The moment a sick person expired, his near relatives cut off their hair,
blackened their faces, and slashed their bodies with shark's teeth, so
that the blood might stream down; in Rarotonga it was customary also to
knock out some of the front teeth in token of sorrow. During the days of
mourning people wore only native cloth, dyed red in the sap of the
candle-nut tree and then dipped in the black mud of a taro-patch. The
very foul smell of these garments is said to have been symbolical of the
putrescent state of the corpse;[43] perhaps at the same time, though we
are not told so, it helped to keep the ghost at arm's length.

[43] W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, p.
181