eastern New Guinea), in the Admiralty Islands, the Shortlands, and Malaita in the Solomon Islands, the Banks Islands, and the New Hebrides. In Anaiteum, of the last group, it was an old man who took off his skin and then looked young; his grand-children made holes in the skin; and when the old man put it on again he shivered with cold and said, "I thought we should live for ever, and cast our skin and become young again; but as you have done this, we shall all die." Thus death came into the world.
In one of the Banks islands, "the cause of the introduction of Death," according to Dr. Codrington, "was the inconvenience of the permanence of property in the same hands while men changed their skins and lived for ever."[1] Kwat (Qat) therefore sent for Mate, "Death," who was given a funeral ceremony. In the Banks islands and the New Hebrides these stories appear to centre around Kwat; according to some the old woman was his mother. Kwat and his brethren were regarded as Vui, or spirits, and Dr. Rivers has adduced sufficient evidence to prove that Kwat was associated with an early immigrant culture which must have spread from Indonesia into Melanesia. He picks up the same dual element, comprising a light and a dark racial element in North Melanesia. In the Gazelle peninsula of New Britain we have two heroes—To Kambinana and To Kovuvuru or Korvuvu—and in New Ireland Soi and Tamono; in each case the former is clever and the latter foolish. There is a mixed population in the Admiralties, due apparently to two immigrant stocks and an aboriginal one; the former are analogous to the immigrant stocks further south, thus the tale was probably brought by one swarm of these immigrants. The primitive Kai of New Guinea[2] have an elaborate belief in a 'soul substance'
- ↑ R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, Oxford, 1891, p. 265.
- ↑ R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, III. C. Keysser, "Aus dem Leben der Kaileute," Berlin, 1911, pp. 1-242.
