Post-death Rituals

Title: Post-death Rituals

General Information about Item:

  • Language: English
  • Country: United States
  • Verbal folklore that features elements of post-death ritual.

Informant Data:

  • Nate Dominy is a Dartmouth professor who has researched several different aspects of aye-aye anatomy and behavior. 

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context:

This interview lasted nearly an hour and was conducted on 2/12/18  in the informant’s office with all three group members present, taking notes, and asking questions.

Scholars learn about this folklore in a variety of settings; our informant happened to learn of it in a campfire setting. He was visiting Madagascar for the first time, and every night the academics would gather around a fire and discuss their days, including their research, the animals, and the local’s beliefs. This item came up during one of those talks and is a common thread of conversation when researchers discuss Malagasy people’s interactions with aye-ayes.

  • Cultural Context:

This verbal folklore comes from a researcher who has conducted first-hand research with aye-ayes in laboratory contexts. He has never seen an aye-aye in the wild, though he has traveled to Madagascar. His knowledge of aye-aye folklore comes from other scholars’ accounts. Predominately, these scholars are Western intellectuals who are not native to Madagascar. Thus, it is a Western academic perspective that observes and disseminates evidence of this behavior by the Malagasy people of Madagascar. They do not take part, or to any large degree, hear from it directly from the locals (as discussed here); this folklore is spread via observation of behavior and interpretations of attitude.

Item:

Below, Professor Dominy describes the ritualized hanging of dead aye-ayes. Briefly, he touches on why the Malagasy people do this. More information can be found here.

So, [the Malagasy people are] sure to kill [the aye-aye] as quickly as possible before this bad luck can be transmitted into some hapless victim. And then the animal is hung up by a post […]. So, there is no other animal that has this kind of treatment. No other animal gets killed instantly like this. And then strung up like this. It’s all thought to be … It’s all wrapped up into probably it’s bizarre appearance.

[The aye-ayes are always hung up] on the outskirts of the village, by the road. And it’s always by the trail. So, the animal is always face down. So, a surprisingly consistent aspect of the aye-aye belief system is to string it up in that way. That might be a safety measure, right. If the animal is pointing, right, either with a snout or with his finger …I guess you’d want that pointing down as much as possible.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Collectors’ Comments:

The two images associated with this folklore were not shared with us by our informants. They were among the top Google Image results when one searches “aye aye folklore.” Note that these photos clearly depict two different locations, and thereby suggest that this behavior is widespread across Madagascar, as Nate alludes to when he describes the ritual as “consistent.”

It should be noted that Sam and Megan told us a similar tale of the Malagasy people’s ritualized post-death treatment of the aye-aye corpses.

Collectors’ Names:

Keira Byno, Savannah Liu, and Annie Medina

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