186 
MADAGASCAR. 
is brought into the village with great ceremony, 
and it there lies in state, probably for some 
weeks. 
“ A number of women, both old and young, sit in the 
house containing the corpse, and the chief mourners 
weep, but the rest sing and beat drums. The funeral 
dirge they call sdsy, for it cannot be properly called 
singing; and all the customs together are termed 
undravuna; and there is no cessation in them day or 
night until the burial, although that sometimes does 
not take place for some time in the case of wealthy 
people. The dirges sung on these occasions are dis¬ 
tressing and strange to hear, and show plainly their 
ignorance of the future state and of what is beyond the 
grave, for the dead are termed ‘lost’ (v6ry ),—lost as 
people are who are left by their companions, and do not 
see the way to go home again; and death they look 
upon as the messenger of some hard-hearted power, who 
drives hard bargains which cannot be altered, and puts 
one in extreme peril (lit., ‘ in the grip of a crocodile ’), 
where no entreaties prevail. The dead they call c the 
gentle (or pleasant) person’; and they will not allow his 
wife and children and all his relatives to think of any¬ 
thing but their bereavement, and the evil which they 
have to expect from the want of the protection they had 
from the dead; for now the pillar of the house on 
which they leant is broken, and the house which shel¬ 
tered them is pulled down, and the town they lived in 
is destroyed, and the strong one they followed is over¬ 
come. And, after that, they declare that the living are 
in trouble, and seem to agree that it had been better 
not to have been bom. 
