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.