Death and Burial.
(Ordinary People.)
When a man or woman is regarded as dying, he or she is at once attended by a woman whose permanent office it is to do this, and who has other women and girls with her to assist her, these others including, but not necessarily being confined to, the females of the dying man’s own family and relatives. The house is full of women; but there is no man there. This special woman and the others attend the dying man,[1] nursing him, washing him from time to time, and keeping the flies away from him; but they apparently do not attempt any measures for curing him, their offices only beginning when he is regarded as dying. In the meantime they all wail, and there are also a number of other women wailing outside the house.
The special woman watches the dying person; and when she thinks he is dead she gives him a heavy blow on the side of the head with her fist, and pronounces him dead. She apparently does not feel his heart, or do more than watch his face; and I should think it may often be that in point of fact he is not dead when the blow is given, and might perhaps have recovered.
Then the women inside the house say to one another that he is dead, and communicate the news to the people outside; whereupon the men in the village all commence shouting as loudly as they can. The reason given for this shouting is that it frightens away the man’s ghost; but if so it is apparently only a partial intimidation of the ghost, who, as will be seen hereafter, is subjected to further alarms at a later stage. The men communicate the news in the ordinary way adopted by these people of shouting it across the valleys; and so it spreads to other villages, and even to other communities. The man being dead, the wailing of the women inside and outside the house is changed into a true funeral wailing song; but this latter only continues for a few minutes. The special woman and some others, probably relatives only, remain in the house; but they do not touch the body at this stage. The other women, probably non-relatives, go out. The relatives of the deceased, both men and women, immediately smear their bodies with mud, but no one else in the village does so.
This is the situation until the first party of women, generally accompanied by men, begin to come in from other villages of the same, and probably of one or more other, communities. These people have been laughing and playing and enjoying themselves on their way to the village, and do so freely until they get close to it. Then they commence wailing (not the funeral song) and shouting, calling the deceased by a relationship term, such as father, brother, etc., though they may never have heard of him before; and, doing this, they enter the village, and go to the house. The incoming women, but not the men, all arrive smeared with mud. The women crowd into and about the house, still wailing as before, but not the funeral song. They all see the body; and each woman, after seeing it, comes out and sits on the platform of the house or on the ground outside. The party of outside village women then cease their first wailing, and commence the funeral song, in which they are joined by the female relatives of the deceased and other women of the village. But again this only lasts for a few minutes, the period being longer or shorter according to the importance of the person who has died.
Other similar parties, coming in from other villages, go through the same performance as they come into the village; and in each case, as the women of each fresh party come out of the house after seeing the corpse, there is a fresh outburst of the funeral song on the part of all the women present, but always only for a few minutes. This goes on till the last batch of visitors has arrived. The people of the village know when this last batch has come, because they have been told by cross-valley shouting which villages are sending parties. The total number of women in the village is then generally very large. After the last batch of visitors has arrived, and until the funeral ceremony, all the women again break out into the funeral song for a few minutes about once an hour in the daytime, but not so often at night.
The funeral takes place probably about twenty-four hours after death. The body is now wrapped up by the special woman attendant, helped by the female relatives of the deceased, in leaves, especially banana leaves, and bark of trees, and remains so wrapped up in the house.
It is placed with the knees bent up to the chin, and the heels to the buttocks. In the meantime men of the village dig a grave 2 or 3 feet deep in the village open enclosure. When all is ready the funeral song begins again, the singers this time being the female relatives of the deceased and the women who have come from outside villages, but not the other women of the village of the deceased. Men of the village then carry the corpse, wrapped and doubled up, and place it, lying on its back, in the grave. There is no real procession from the house to the grave, though all the people assemble at the latter; but during the whole of the time, until the body is in the grave, the singing by the women of the funeral song continues. As soon as the body is in the grave, all the men, both villagers and visitors, shout again as before, and for the same purpose. The grave is then filled up, the women in the meantime singing as before; and when this is done the funeral is over.
The relatives of the deceased now go into mourning. The widow or widower or other nearest relative wears the mourning string necklace already described. He or she, and also the other near relatives, smear their faces, and sometimes, but not always, their bodies, with black, to which, as regards the face, but not the body, is added oil or water. Some more distant relatives, instead of blackening themselves, wear the mourning shell necklace. And all this will continue, nominally without break, until the mourning is formally removed, in the way to be explained hereafter. As a matter of fact, the insignia of mourning are not worn without interruption, and the black smearing is by no means so retained; but on any special occasion the person would take care to appear in mourning. There is a custom under which the widow or widower or other nearest relative may, instead of wearing the mourning string necklace, abstain during the period of mourning from eating some particular food, of which deceased was most fond.[2]
In connection with mourning, I should also mention a curious custom, which I understand is common, though not universal, for a woman who has lost a child, and especially a first-born or very clear child, to amputate the top end of one of her fingers, up to the first joint, with an adze. Having done this once for one child, she will possibly do it again for another child; and a woman has been seen with three fingers mutilated in this way.[3]
The family of the deceased invite men and women from some other community, but only one community, to a funeral feast, which is held after an interval of two or three days from the day of the funeral. On the day appointed these guests arrive. They are all well ornamented, but, with one exception, they do not wear their dancing ornaments. One of them, however, usually a chief or the son of a chief of the community invited, comes in his full dancing ornaments. All the guest men bring with them their spears, and perhaps adzes or clubs.
When they arrive the following performances take place, the village enclosure being left by the villagers empty and open:—First two guest women enter the village enclosure at one end, and run in silence round it, brandishing spears in both hands, as at the big feast; but they make no hostile demonstration. When these two women have reached their starting point, they again do the same thing, brandishing their spears as before, and all the guest men, except the specially dressed one, follow them by advancing with a dancing step along the enclosure, they also brandishing their spears, and also being silent. Thus the whole group goes to the other end of the village, passing the grave of the deceased as they do so; then they turn round, and come back again in the same way, but on their return they stop before they reach the grave.
Then the specially ornamented guest man enters alone, without his arms, but with his drum, which he beats. He dances up the village enclosure in a zigzag course, going from side to side of the enclosure, and always facing in the direction in which he is at the time moving; and during his advance he beats his drum., but otherwise he and all the other people are silent. When in this way he has reached the grave, the chief of the clan of the village where the funeral takes place, who does not wear any dancing ornaments, approaches him, and removes his heavy head ornament. This ends the first part of the ceremony; and the villagers and guests then chat and conduct themselves in the ordinary way.
Plates [82] and [83] illustrate scenes at a funeral feast in the village of Amalala. In the former plate the grave is very clear, and the remains of an older grave are visible behind the post a little to the left. At the upper end of the village enclosure are the visitors, who are about to dance along the enclosure past the grave, and then back again up to it. The figures in the emone behind are Amalala men, watching the performance. In the latter plate the visitor chief is seen dancing along the village enclosure towards the grave.
In the meantime the members of the family of the deceased bring in one or more village pigs and some vegetables. A number of sticks are laid upon the ground over the grave, the sticks crossing each other so as to form a rude ground platform (this is not done by any particular person), and these sticks are covered with banana leaves.[4] The pigs are placed on this platform, and are then killed by the pig-killer and cut up, and the vegetables and pieces of pig are distributed by the chief of the clan, helped perhaps by the family of the deceased, among the male visitors. The one specially dressed visitor, being the only one who has really danced, gets much the largest share. For example, if there be two or more pigs, he will get an entire pig for himself. Then the ceremony is over, and the guests return home. The wood of the platform is not removed from the grave, but is left to rot there. The killing of the pigs at this ceremony is regarded as the act which will, they think, finally propitiate or drive away the ghost of the departed.
It will be noticed that, though representatives from several communities may be invited and come to the funeral, only one community is invited to the subsequent funeral feast, just as only one community is invited to the big feast, which latter we must, I think, associate with the general superstitious idea of laying the ghosts of past departed chiefs and notables. I cannot say what is the reason for the confinement of these invitations to one community only, but it must, I think, have had some definite origin[5]; and as to this I am struck by the similarity of the Massim idea, referred to by Dr. Seligmann, that an individual’s death primarily concerns the dead man’s hamlet and one other hamlet of his clan, with which certain death feasts are exchanged, other members of the clan being comparatively little affected.[6]
As soon as possible after the funeral pig-killing, they catch some wild pig or pigs, and kill and eat them, and sweep down the village by way of purification ceremony, very much as they do in the case of the big feast, except that it is on a very much smaller scale, and that the people do not afterwards leave the village.
The ceremony of removal of the mourning may take place after an interval of only a week or two, or of so much as six months, the date often depending upon the occurrence of some other ceremony, at which the removal of the mourning can be carried out without necessitating a ceremony for itself only. Visitors from some other community attend. The ceremony only applies to the nearest relative—the person who wears the string necklace; but, on his or her mourning being ceremoniously removed, the mourning of all others in respect of the same deceased ceases automatically.[7] This nearest relative has to provide a village pig. There is a feast, and dancing and pig-killing and distribution of food and pig, in the usual way, and this may be in the village of the deceased or in some other village of the community. The pig-killing is done by the pig-killer under the platform of a chiefs platform grave, or on the site of it. The pig, specially provided by the nearest relative, is bought and paid for by some person, as in the case of some of the ceremonies already described, and this person, after the killing of the pig, without special ceremony, cuts off the mourner’s string necklace, dips it in the blood of the pig, and throws it away; then he takes some coloured paint, usually red, and with it daubs two lines on each side of the face across the cheek of the mourner, who of course at this ceremony will still have his black paint. If the mourner has been refraining from food, instead of wearing the necklace, the ceremony is confined to the paint-daubing. Then the mourner pays this ceremonial pig-buyer for his services, probably in feathers or dog-teeth, and the mourning is at an end.
There will at a later date be a purification ceremony, at which wild pigs will be killed, such as has already been described.[8]