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respond, he declares that it is up to the son of the dead chief, Hamlet, to intervene. At this there is a new stir of surprise in Bohannan’s audience, since for the Tiv this kind of matter is not the business of the young, but of the elders, and the deceased has a living brother, Claudius:
    The old men muttered: such omens were matters for chiefs and elders, not for youngsters; no good could come of going behind a chief ’s back; clearly Horatio was not a man who knew things. 3
    Bohannan is then further disconcerted by finding herself unable to say whether Hamlet the elder and Claudius had the same mother, a distinction that is crucial in the eyes of the Tiv:
    “Did Hamlet’s father and uncle have one mother?”
    His question barely penetrated my mind; I was too upset and thrown too far off balance by having one of the most important elements of Hamlet knocked straight out of the picture. Rather uncertainly I said that I thought they had the same mother, but I wasn’t sure—the story didn’t say. The old man told me severely that these genealogical details made all the difference and that when I got home I must ask the elders about it. He shouted out the door to one of his younger wives to bring his goatskin bag. 4
    Bohannan then turns the discussion to Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, but this goes no better. Whereas in Western readings of the play, it is customary to insist on the slightly indecent rapidity with which Gertrude remarries after the death of her husband, the Tiv are surprised that she waited so long:
    “The son Hamlet was very sad because his mother had married again so quickly. There was no need for her to do so, and it is our custom for a widow not to go to her next husband until she has mourned for two years.”
    “Two years is too long,” objected the wife, who had appeared with the old man’s battered goatskin bag. “Who will hoe your farms for you while you have no husband?”
    “Hamlet,” I retorted without thinking, “was old enough to hoe his mother’s farms himself. There was no need for her to remarry.” No one looked convinced. I gave up. 5

    If Bohannan finds it difficult to explain Hamlet’s family situation to the Tiv, this is even more the case in getting them to understand the place of ghosts in Shakespeare’s play and the society that produced it:
    I decided to skip the soliloquy. Even if Claudius was here thought quite right to marry his brother’s widow, there remained the poison motif, and I knew they would disapprove of fratricide. More hopefully I resumed, “That night Hamlet kept watch with the three who had seen his dead father. The dead chief again appeared, and although the others were afraid, Hamlet followed his dead father off to one side. When they were alone, Hamlet’s dead father spoke.”
    “Omens can’t talk!” The old man was emphatic.
    “Hamlet’s dead father wasn’t an omen. Seeing him might have been an omen, but he was not.” My audience looked as confused as I sounded. “It was Hamlet’s dead father. It was a thing we call a ‘ghost.’ ” 6
    As familiar as ghosts are to us, the Tiv do not believe in them and they have no place in their culture:
    I had to use the English word, for unlike many of the neighboring tribes, these people didn’t believe in the survival after death of any individuating part of the personality.
    “What is a ‘ghost’? An omen?”
    “No, a ‘ghost’ is someone who is dead but who walks around and can talk, and people can hear him and see him but not touch him.”
    They objected. “One can touch zombis.”
    “No, no! It was not a dead body the witches had animated to sacrifice and eat. No one else made Hamlet’s dead father walk. He did it himself.” 7
    This explanation resolves the problem not at all, since the Tiv are more rational than Anglo-Saxons and do not accept the idea of the walking dead:
    “Dead men can’t walk,” protested my audience as one man.
    I was quite willing to compromise. “A