204 A WIDOW 



Malagasy one, and is as follows : When the corpse of the 

 deceased husband is about to be buried, the widow is decorated 

 profusely with all the ornaments she possesses, wearing a 

 scarlet Idmba, with beads and silver chains on her neck and 

 wrists and ankles, long ear-rings depending from her ears to 

 her shoulders, and silver ornaments on her head. Then she is 

 placed in the house, so that it may be seen by everyone how 

 her husband adorned her while he was yet living ; and when 

 the people go away to the funeral, she remains still in the 

 house, and does not go to the grave. When the relatives and 

 friends have returned home and seen the widow sitting in her 

 grand clothing and ornaments, they rush upon her, tearing her 

 dress and violently pulling off her ornaments, so as to hurt her, 

 and say at the same time : " This is the cause of our losing our 

 relative " ; for they believe that the vintana i.e. fate or luck 

 of the wife is stronger than that of her husband and so has 

 caused his death. Then they give her a coarse Idmba, a spoon 

 with a broken handle, and a round dish with the stand broken 

 off ; her hair is dishevelled, and she is covered up with a coarse 

 mat ; and under it she remains all day long, and can only leave 

 it at night ; and whoever goes into the house, the widow may 

 not speak to them. She is not allowed to wash her face or her 

 hands, but only the tips of her fingers. She endures all this 

 sometimes for a year, or at least for eight months ; and even 

 then, her time of mourning is not ended, but endures for a con- 

 siderable time afterwards. And she is not allowed to go home 

 to her own relatives until she has been divorced first by the 

 husband's family. 



The house in which people die is left by the survivors, and 

 no one occupies it again ; they do not pull it down, but let it 

 fall to pieces of itself, but they do not leave the village as do 

 the Sakalava in similar circumstances. Such houses are called 

 trdno fdlaka (" broken houses ") ; but I am informed that this 

 last custom is falling into disuse ; and happily, the influence of 

 Christian teaching has caused the treatment of widows to be 

 greatly altered, so that it is now becoming a thing of the past. 



After leaving the " village of many poles," our afternoon 

 journey was southward, first crossing several spurs of the higher 

 hills with their intermediate valleys ; and then down a long 

 level tract of country between the lake and a bold wall-like line 



