Nor do the kosi ever employ any of those ghastly, hair-raising methods of frightening people, so well known from our own ghost stories. I remember well the first time I heard the kosi mentioned. It was a dark night, and I, in the company of three natives, was returning from a neighboring village, where a man had died that afternoon and been buried in our presence.
We were marching in Indian file, when suddenly one of the natives stopped, and they all began to talk, looking around with evident curiosity and interest, but without a trace of terror.
My interpreter explained that the kosi was heard in the yam garden which we were just crossing. I was struck by the frivolous way in which the natives treated this gruesome incident, and tried to make out how far they were serious about the alleged appearance, and in what manner they reacted to it emotionally. There seemed to be not the slightest doubt about the reality of the occurrence, and I afterwards learned that although the kosi is quite commonly seen or beard, no one is afraid to go alone into the darkness of the garden where the kosi has just been heard, nor is anyone in the least under the influence of the heavy, oppressing, almost paralyzing fear so well known to all those who have experienced or studied the fear of ghosts, as these are conceived by us in Europe.
The natives have absolutely no "ghost stories" to relate about the kosi beyond insignificant pranks, and even little children do not seem to be afraid of him. In general, there is a remarkable absence of superstitious fear of darkness, and no reluctance to go about alone at night. I have sent out boys, of certainly not more than ten years of age, a good distance alone at night, to fetch some object left on purpose, and I found that they were remarkably fearless, and for a small bit of tobacco quite ready to go. Men and youths will walk alone at night from one village to another, often a couple of miles, without the chance of meeting anyone.
In fact, as such excursions are usually carried out in connection with some love adventure, often illicit, the man would avoid meeting anybody by stepping aside into the bush.
I well remember having met on the road in the dusk solitary women, though only old ones. The road from Omarakana and a whole series of other villages lying not far from the eastern shore to the beach passes through the raiboag, a well-wooded coral ridge, where the path winds through boulders and rocks, over crevasses and near caves, at night a very uncanny type of surrounding; but the natives often go there and back at night, quite alone; of course, individuals differ, some being more afraid than others, but in general there is very little of the universally reported native's dread of darkness among the Kiriwinians.
Nevertheless, when death occurs in a village, there is an enormous increase of superstitious fear. This fear is not, however, aroused by the kosi but by much less "supernatural' beings, i.
These are actual living women who may be known and talked with in ordinary life, but who are supposed to possess the power of making themselves invisible, or of despatching a "sending" from their bodies, or of traveling vast distances through the air. In this disembodied form they are extremely virulent, powerful, and also ubiquitous. Anyone who chances to be exposed to them is sure to be attacked.
They are especially dangerous at sea, and whenever there is a storm, and a canoe is threatened, the mulukuausi are there looking out for prey. Nobody, there fore, would dream of going on any more distant voyage such as south to the D'Entrecasteaux group, or east to the Marshall Bennets, or still further, to Woodlark Island, without knowing the kaiga'u, a powerful magic, designed to ward off and bewilder the mulukuausi. Even when building a sea-going waga canoe of the large type, called masawa, spells must be uttered to reduce the danger from these terrible women.
They are also dangerous on land, where they attack people and eat away tongues, eyes, and lungs lopoulo, translated 'lungs,' also denotes the "insides' in general. But all these data really belong to the chapter about sorcery and evil magic, and have only been mentioned here, where the mulukuausi interest us, as especially connected with the dead. For they are possessed of truly ghoulish instincts. Whenever a man dies, they simply swarm and feed on his insides. They eat away his lopoulo, his tongue, his eyes, and, in fact, all his body, after which they become more than ever dangerous to the living.
They assemble all round the house where the dead man lived and try to enter it. In the old days, when the corpse was exposed in the middle of the village in a half-covered grave, the mulukuausi used to congregate on the trees in and around the village. The mulukuausi are intimately connected with the smell of carrion, and I have heard many natives affirm that at sea, when in danger, they were distinctly conscious of the smell of burapuase carrion , which was a sign that the evil women were there. The mulukuausi are objects of real terror.
Thus the immediate neighborhood of the grave is absolutely deserted when night approaches. I owe my first acquaintance with the mulukuausi to an actual experience. Quite at the beginning of my stay in Kiriwina, I had been watching the wailing round a freshly made grave. After sunset, all the mourners retired into the village, and when they tried to beckon me away, I insisted on remaining behind, thinking that there might be some ceremony which they wanted to perform in my absence.
After I had maintained my vigil for some ten minutes, a few men returned with my interpreter, who had previously gone to the village. He explained the matter to me, and was very serious about the danger from the mulukuausi, though, knowing white men and their ways, he was not so much concerned for me. Even in and around the village where a death has occurred there is the greatest fear of the mulukuausi, and at night the natives refuse to go about the village or to enter the surrounding grove and gardens. The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies.
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