[1] See [note 1 on p. 128].
[2] Father Egedi describes in Anthropos a Kuni method of preparing a fruit similar to the one described here, and which also gives rise to terrible smells. The tree is referred to by him as being a bread-fruit; and Dr. Stapf thinks that the malage may possibly be one of the Artocarpus genus, of which some have smooth or almost smooth fruit, and some are said to have poisonous sap, and the seeds of many of which are eaten, or of some closely allied type.
[3] The information obtained by me at Mafulu did not go beyond the actual facts as stated by me. I cannot, however, help suspecting that there is, or has been, a close connection between the building of anemone and the holding of a big feast, and that the latter may be compared with the tabu ceremonial of the Koita described by Dr. Seligmann (Melanesians of British New Guinea, pp. 141 and 145 et seq.). Indeed there are some elements of similarity between the two feasts.
[4] Compare the Roro custom for the messengers carrying an invitation to important feasts to take with them bunches of areca nut, which are hung in the marea of the local groups of the invited itsubu (Seligmann’s Melanesians of British New Guinea, p. 218).
[5] See note on [p. 256] as to the use by me of the terms “grave,” “bury” and “burial.”
[6] Ibid.
Some other Ceremonies and Feasts
Ceremony on Birth.
There is no ceremony on the birth of a child, except in the case of the first-born of a chief. On this occasion the women of a neighbouring community are invited. They come in their full dancing ornaments, and armed in both hands with spears and either clubs or adzes. They rush into the village, first to the chiefs house and then to his emone; and at each of these they make a warlike demonstration, actually hurling their spears at the buildings with such force that the spears sometimes go through the thatch of the roof. Then follows a distribution of vegetables among the visitors, after which one, two, or three village pigs are killed under a chiefs burial platform or on the site of a past one, cut up in the ordinary way, as at the big feast, given to the visitors and taken away by them, and the ceremony is over. There is no singing.[1]