[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

556 MALEKULA
left the corpse and travelling northward came again to where
Temes Savsap was sitting. Without more ado he shot her, and
so passed unobstructed on his way to Wies.
Once the ghost has got safely beyond Temes Savsap it goes
through a hole in the rock Lembwil Song, and proceeds to a point
where there are two trees. From one of these men, and from
the other women, leap into the sea to reach the mainland where
is their future home. The life in Wies is not a particularly
pleasant one, it seems. The king of this land of the dead is a
being called Anrum Mbwilei, who was himself never a living
person. He stands in the centre of the village dancing ground
in Wies and beats the gongs. He beats them so hard that he
excretes continually. His excrement is the food of the dead, but
ghosts may escape having to eat it by bringing with them from
the land of the living the rotten stump of an Erythrina (mzndar)
tree. Then when Anruru Mbwilei tums to them and says :
“ Here's dung for you," they can reply: “ All right, Aavu (grand-
father), we've brought our food with us." For this reason a
man will sometimes seek out or prepare a piece of Erythrina trce
against the time of his death. In one or two other ways also
the Land of the Dead differs from the world of the living. The
women do not wear the mat-skirt, characteristic of Scniang, but
instead the petticoat of banana ï¬Åbre which is worn in Mewun.
Another distinction is that all the vegetation, in particular the
yams, are red and not green.
Apparently the (lead retain a ‘certain interest in the activities
of the living. Thus, during a funeral there is in the Land of the
Dead a constant heating of the gongs, and ghosts continually
perform the Nimangki dance teur. Before the building oi the
mission station in the no-man's land betwocn Mewun and Seniang,
the people of both districts could hear this sound of the gongs.
Much of the information about the life of these ghosts was
obtained from a man who actually went to the Land of the Dead
and returned thence alive. The place, he said, was enclosed by
a fence, and had only one entrance. Inside he saw many people.
While he was there, two ghosts smelt him and plotted to kill
and eat him, but his life was saved by an old woman, so that
he was able to escape and return to the world of the living.
Side by side with this belief in Wies, to which all go irrespective
of the manner of their life or death, there exists, it seems, the