to.  Where custom prescribes a different course, they follow that with the same docility.  When a Kansas or Osage wife finds, on the return of a war-party, that she is a widow, she howls dismally, but forthwith seeks an avenger in the shape of a new husband.  “After the death of a husband, the sooner a squaw marries again, the greater respect and regard she is considered to show for his memory.” (Hunter, 246.) The Australian custom for women, especially widows, is to mourn by scratching the face and branding the body.  As for the grief itself, its quality may be inferred from the fact that these women sit day after day by the grave or platform, howling their monotonous dirge, but, as soon as they are allowed to pause for a meal they indulge in the merriest pranks. (K.E.  Jung, 111.)

MOURNING FOR ENTERTAINMENT

In many cases the mourning of savages, instead of being an expression of affection and grief, appears to be simply a mode of gratifying their love of ceremonial and excitement.  That is, they mourn for entertainment—­I had almost said for fun; and it is easy to see too, that vanity and superstition play their role here as in their “ornamenting” and everything else they do.  By the Abipones “women are appointed to go forward on swift steeds to dig the grave, and honor the funeral with lamentations.” (Dobrizhoffer II., 267.) During the ceremony of making a skeleton of a body the Patagonians, as Falkner informs us (119), indulge in singing in a mournful tone of voice, and striking the ground, to frighten away the Valichus or Evil Beings.  Some of the Indians also visit the relatives of the dead, indulging in antics which show that the whole thing is done for effect and pastime.  “During this visit of condolence,” Falkner continues,

“they cry, howl, and sing, in the most dismal manner; straining out tears, and pricking their arms and thighs with sharp thorns, to make them bleed.  For this show of grief they are paid with glass beads,” etc.

The Rev. W. Ellis writes that the Tahitians, when someone had died, “not only wailed in the loudest and most affecting tone, but tore their hair, rent their garments, and cut themselves with shark’s teeth or knives in a most shocking manner.”  That this was less an expression of genuine grief than a result of the barbarous love of excitement, follows from what he adds:  that in a milder form, this loud wailing and cutting with shark’s teeth was “an expression of joy as well as of grief.” (Pol.  Res., I., 527.) The same writer relates in his book on Hawaii (148) that when a chief or king died on that island,