Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/132

110 speech. I could not hear what he said; he had not been allowed to eat for five days, and was weak; but I was told that it was to the effect that some people had said the money was not enough, and now here was some more.'

Though women are completely excluded from the Suqe of the men, they have something of the sort among themselves, which is called improperly by the same name. They admit to grades of honour on payment of money and making of a feast, and so become tavine motar, women of distinction. By their Suqe they become rich in money, with which to help their husbands in their steps in rank, and they plant their own gardens for the feasts. Thus they advance to be tattooed, to wear shell bracelets, to put on an ornamented pari, the woman's scanty garment, to decorate their faces with red earth, in all which glories the tavine worawora, the common woman, can have no share. But this is in the way of kolekole rather than of suqe; two things which become so connected in the higher ranks of men that an account of one is incomplete without an explanation of the other.

A kolekole is a feast with dancing and singing made in connexion with a certain object, and giving a certain rank marked by its appropriate ornament. A man makes such a feast for himself, or for his son or nephew. When one has reached the highest place in the Suqe, he can still advance in the world by kolekole and he often accompanies with these his regular progress in Suqe rank. The story of the Little Orphan exhibits in a succession of these festivals a picture of native grandeur and success. When a man builds a new house he will kole it, and a nule, a grotesque image, will remain as a memorial at the door. When a new gamal for the Suqe is built, or when a man adds a compartment for the oven, to which he has lately risen or is to rise, there is a kole-gamal. A stone is brought up from the beach and placed near the gamal., or a wona, a platform of stones, is built up, and a feast is made to kole it. The maker of the feast, or the youth in whose honour it is made, dances on the stone, and can wear upon his ankle afterwards a wetapup, an