758 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
It is considered a very lucky event for the whole village, and the 
general congratulations are hearty and prolonged. The women and 
girls deck themselves with flowers, tie banana leaves round their 
waists, and dance round drums, singing meanwhile a song adapted 
to the occasion. The rest of the company sit in groups, watching 
the dancers, drinking beer, and smoking. The father makes the 
round of the groups to receive the congratulations of his friends, 
the mother sitting in the meantime with her child at the door of 
the hut, where, one by one, the guests congratulate her. During a 
pause in the dancing the people assemble in a semicircle round the 
happy mother, and the eldest grandfather takes the child, and holding 
it up, cries out, “ Its name is so-and-so,” e.g ., Mwenda or Kataruba. 
This is greeted with the shouts of “ Mwenda, may he live happy, 
may he be brave, may he have many wives, may he become 
great,” and such-like good wishes for the child’s future. A 
Waganda child receives only one name, but the variety of names 
among them is very great. The names of gods, animals, and 
insects are often given. The king, however, and the chiefs, 
although at first possessing only one name, gradually acquire 
more, as after each feat of arms or special event in their lives a 
significant name is given to them, and for this reason I doubt 
whether the list of kings I have given is correct ; I suspect that 
more than one name has been given to one king in the list. I 
never heard two lists agree exactly. 
Deaths . — When a man dies, a messenger is sent round to his 
friends to summon them to the funeral, which always takes place 
within twelve hours after his decease. The body is not embalmed, 
but simply wrapped in mbugu cloth, during which process his 
friends sing funeral dirges, and a minstrel is often engaged to sing 
an extempore eulogy of the man’s life. The body is then carried 
into a jungle, where it is buried in a deep grave. Nothing is buried 
with the body. The friends then generally return to the dead man’s 
hut, where a cow is killed, and a funeral feast takes place. If 
a chief dies, his body is placed in a coffin, and the mourning and 
funeral festivities last three or four days. The kings and their 
mothers are the only persons to whose memory monuments are erected. 
Their graves^are prepared as follows : — A large square hole is dug, at 
the bottom of which are laid layer after layer of mbugu, skins, 
