685 



but I think his decisions are regulated by custom and etiquette, 

 though I failed to inquire into this matter. 



Looked at from our standpoint, the feast, in its economic 

 aspect, might be described as a kind of picnic, organized by 

 the clan or clans concerned, the expense being more or less 

 equally shared by all those present, and the credit for success 

 by the organizers, who have also undoubtedl}^ been put to 

 the greatest amount of trouble in the proceedings. (^'^) 



4. Death, Burial, and Mourning. 



Ge7ie?rd Remarks. — Reference has been previously made 

 to the attitude of the native towards death and the dead, and 

 in this connection mention has been made in sec. 5, chap, iii., 

 of the role of the dead man's spirit in protecting the Nehuru 

 coconuts, and of a similar part played by an ancestral spirit 

 in reference to Gora. Again reference has been made to this 

 subject throughout the first two sections of this chapter, 

 especially in the first. I shall now give an account of death 

 and burial as I have been able to reconstruct these events fromi 

 the information gathered from the natives, for I have never 

 witnessed the scenes occurring after death, nor the burial, 

 nor the first stages of mourning. Many, indeed, of the old 

 customs, as they are described in this section, could no longer 

 be seen by a white man, as they have been abandoned, either in 

 reality or in pretence, owing to the influence of Government 

 rules and missionary teaching. 



I have seen, of course, all the later stages of mourning, 

 and I have watched the posthumous wailings in another dis- 

 trict (Northern Massim, Woodlark Island). I am also con- 

 vinced that I succeeded in obtaining an entirely trustworthy 

 account of the facts as the result of independent discussions 

 with several of my best native informants, who agreed 

 perfectly in their concrete details. In this I was greatly 

 helped by the kind suggestions of the Rev. W. J. V. Saville, 

 who directed my attention to several customs carefully 

 avoided by the natives. I am also indebted to Mr. Alfred 

 Greenaway, who, later on, actually forced the natives to tell 

 me truthful details by sha,ming them in my presence for their 



(97) The data given in this chapter ought to be compared 

 with Prof. Seligman's description of the VJalaga feast (^op. cxf., 

 pp. 589 to 606). Prof. Seligman's information \v\S\. throw much 

 light on many points I was obliged to leave oljscure. I had, of 

 course, at the time to confine myself entirely to what I observed 

 and to what I could learn from the natives, and it was only on 

 working up my notes that I realized how many are the correspond- 

 ences between Prof. Seligman's facts and my own. I am convinced 

 that the Mailu Govt maduna and the Walaga are varieties of the 

 same ceremonial institution. 



