689 



in order to maintain its brilliancy and blackness it is 

 periodically renewed. This is always done at some "social" 

 opportunity, such, for instance, as during a visit to a neigh- 

 bouring village, or when assisting at a small feast or ceremony, 

 or when returning home from an expedition. Otherwise the 

 pigment would not be kept quite up to the mark, and the 

 brown of the skin would be seen through it, making the man 

 appear dirty rather than black. 



It has been mentioned (sec. 1, chap, iii.) that in mourning 

 the hair of the head is shaved and that on the face allowed 

 to grow. This is continued by the deep mourners throughout 

 the Mcigu period. The armlets of plaited fern vine, plain, or 

 ornamented with yellow orchid straw, are thrown away, and 

 in their place less ornate armlets of plaited string or of plain 

 white fibre (cSiWed- Kue-kue in the mainland Mailu dialect). 

 Again, all the finer ornaments made of red shell discs are 

 removed from the body ; a man might also wear a necklet of 

 string, with one or more white cowrie shells (Ovulum ovum) 

 suspended from it. The right thing to do was to make up a 

 necklet comprised of various relics of the dead man ; his hair 

 in the first place, his perineal band, his comb, shell-disc orna- 

 ments, etc. All such articles were bound together with strings 

 and formed a fairly bulky ornament. So also plain strings, 

 called Navanavdra, were worn across the breast. 



During deep mourning a man might not dance, nor fish ; 

 he could, however, work in his garden, and he might do some 

 hunting, but not much. The coconut taboo observed by the 

 mourners has been dealt with above in sec. 5, chap. iii. 



Weeping for the Dead, and Burial; Mortuary Feasts. — 

 After this general outline of mourning and of the mourners, 

 let us turn to the details of the events that occur after a man's 

 death, immediately and later. After a man dies his nearest 

 relatives, friends, and acquaintances intone the wailing. This 

 is a weird sound, very highly pitched and monotonously 

 regular — first a long howl, then three short ones, terminating 

 in a long one again. I heard this sound once only, in Dikdias 

 village, Muiu'a (Woodlark Island), and for a while, until I 

 guessed what it was, I was quite puzzled as to whether it 

 was an extraordinarily loud wailing of children or some strange 

 howl of Papuan dingoes, or what not. The lamentation of 

 the nearest relations goes on for a considerable time, though 

 that of the others soon ceases. The Naiidma and Dod'e sit 

 round the corpse and embrace it, wailing and exclaiming, 

 "Ina ndbu ee... !" (long drawn) — ''O my younger brother (or 

 sister)!" or "Itut uini ee...\" (long drawn) — "O my elder 

 brother or sister) ! " They are also said actually to cry and 

 to be very sad. 



