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. [99]

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.