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And not ten years ago, in the Gilberts, the widow must disinter, cleanse, polish, and thenceforth carry about her, by day and night, the head of her dead husband. In all these cases we may suppose the process, whether of cleansing or drying, to have fully exorcised the aitu. But the Paumotuan belief is more obscure. Here the man is duly buried, and he has to be watched.
All this time, and all the time I was following home, I kept repeating that native word, which I remembered by “Polly, put the kettle on and make us all some tea,” tea-a-pollo. “Uma,” says I, when I got back, “what does Tiapolo mean?” “Devil,” says she. “I thought aitu was the word for that,” I said. “Aitu ’nother kind of devil,” said she; “stop bush, eat Kanaka.
The month was also called Aitu tele, great god, from the principal worship of the month. At another place it was named Tangaloa tele, for a similar reason. This month was called Toe utu va, or digging again, and so named from the yam crop. The name is also explained as the further digging up of the winds to raise storms.
The rite was practised beyond doubt in simple piety; the repose of the soul was its object: its motive, reverent affection. The present king disowns indeed all knowledge of a dangerous aitu; he declares the souls of the unburied were only wanderers in limbo, lacking an entrance to the proper country of the dead, unhappy, nowise hurtful.
On closer acquaintance with them, however, it was discovered that they lived under the influence of a host of imaginary deities, claiming alike belief and corresponding practice. At his birth a Samoan was supposed to be taken under the care of some god, or aitu, as it was called.
It is plain we have in Europe stories of a similar complexion; and the Polynesian varua ino or aitu o le vao is clearly the near kinsman of the Transylvanian vampire. Here is a tale in which the kinship appears broadly marked. On the atoll of Penrhyn, then still partly savage, a certain chief was long the salutary terror of the natives.
I tell you the truth: I had made up my mind to see an aitu; and if the thing had looked like a pig or a woman, it wouldn’t have given me the same turn. The trouble was that it seemed kind of square, and the idea of a square thing that was alive and sang knocked me sick and silly. I must have stood quite a while; and I made pretty certain it was right out of the same tree that the singing came.
Some said he had a church there, where he worshipped Tiapolo, and Tiapolo appeared to him; others swore that there was no sorcery at all, that he performed his miracles by the power of prayer, and the church was no church, but a prison, in which he had confined a dangerous aitu. Namu had been in the bush with him once, and returned glorifying God for these wonders.
The place of death was earnestly sought out; the sheet was spread upon the ground; and the women, moved with pious anxiety, sat about and watched it. If any living thing alighted it was twice brushed away; upon the third coming it was known to be the spirit of the dead, was folded in, carried home and buried beside the body; and the aitu rested.
Aitu iti, or small gods, is another name, from the worship of the inferior household gods in that month. Called Faaafu, or withering, from the withering of the yam vine and other plants, which become coloured "like the shells." Taafanua is another name of the month, which means, roam or walk about the land, being the name of a god worshipped in that month.