Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/63

Rh A prominent event in the life of a boy, in which the father's sister takes a part, is when her nephew reaches a certain rank in the suqe, the organisation which dominates the whole lives of the Banks' Islanders. The rite I am about to describe is as it is practised in Motlav, but it is probably very similar in other islands. It has two special interests. It is the only occasion on which women ever enter the gamal or club-house of the suqe, and it is to this ceremony that the father's sister owes her name. We have here an excellent illustration of the difficulty of obtaining explanations from Melanesians, and I believe this difficulty is general among those of the lower culture. One of the first pieces of information I gained in the Banks' Islands was that the father's sister is called veve vus rawe, or "the mother who strikes the tusked pig." Although my informant was of exceptional intelligence, he could not give the explanation of this name, and it was only seven or eight months later, when on my way home, that I was told of the following ceremony, which probably provides the explanation.

The name of the division of the suqe in connection with which the ceremony takes place is Avtagataga. When a man or child is to be initiated into this division, all the people gather in the open space of the village; the candidate sits on a mat, and about twenty women sit on mats round him. Of these women the father's sister must be one, and she will take the leading part in the ensuing rite. The head of a tusked pig (rawe) is put on the mat before the candidate, and, after the usual payments of money, four blasts are blown on a conch-shell; and at the end of each blast the candidate brings down a stone on the pig's head lying before him. Then the candidate is taken into the gamal by his father's sister and the other women, being led in if he is adult by his aunt, and carried on her back if he is being initiated while yet a child. The initiate then becomes nat vuhe