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. [100] 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 [101]; 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. [102]

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. [103] 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