One of the most effectual means of exorcising devils is by fanning with leaves. The Mūs racing canoe, having returned to the village soon after a death had taken place there, was not received in the usual manner. Two elderly men who were on the beach, waiting, ran down before the canoe could touch the shore, and hurriedly brushed it, and the men in it, with brooms. They then brought the canoe ashore, and fanned it with coco-palm leaves, so that the dead man's ghost might not take possession.
When the north-east monsoon sets in, the sea is very rough on the east coast, and many people become seriously ill, the result being that there are always a greater number of deaths than usual in that part of the island.
All the villages there situated accordingly take in hand the process of Tanangla, which signifies "support" or "prevention."
In this, they fence Elpanam with palm leaves, and festoon the houses and pathways with various kinds of shrubs and grasses. They also prepare huge images in human form, by twisting palm leaves round logs of wood, and place these about their houses.
An old man lost his teeth, and to celebrate the fact, gave a great feast to a large body of people who came to it from other villages. The giver was adorned with silver wire from head to foot, and made to sit in a kantéra (mafai's chair) in honour of his departed grinders.
A man was bitten by a snake, with serious consequences. When he recovered, he invited his friends to a feast, and performed the ceremony of Ke luing alaa, which consisted in waving a lighted palm-leaf torch round his head.
The natives apparently possess the right to assume various social distinctions at will.
There is a class of men termed Sanokuv which numbers many individuals in its ranks. Sanokuv seems to mean a bashful or delicate person.
These men will not eat any food cooked by others, neither will they use well-water, nor partake of pigs and chickens reared in the village, as they consider these unclean. The water they require they obtain either from a jungle stream, or by collecting rain. They will not drink toddy made from trees near the village, but draw it from distant palms. Everything is partaken of from special vessels; toddy is sucked from a bamboo through a reed, of which the mouth-end is capped with a larger as soon as the drink is finished. They are, however, willing to accept bread, biscuits, and rum from others, but the latter is drunk from a new coconut shell, and never from a glass.