Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/162

Rh yams in each. It must also be remembered that the marriage gift is the chief and most ostentatious product of the garden work.

In about a week or a fortnight, the taytu (small yams) are brought in from the gardens to the village. The owner then engages a number of helpers — men, women, and children — to carry the gift to his sister's husband, perhaps right at the other end of the district (pl. 28). These put on semi-festive dress (see pl. 61), paint their faces, adorn themselves with flowers and set out in a merry crowd; this is a time for gaiety and rejoicing. The carrier parties walk about all over the gardens, inspect and admire or criticize the crops. Perhaps a man, through special luck or excess of zeal in labour, has an outstandingly good yield, and the renown (butura) of this has spread. Or there may be a famous master-gardener in the village, and his crops have to be viewed and compared with his previous achievements. Sometimes a village community, or several of them, agree to have a kayasa (competitive) harvest, and all strive to the utmost to do themselves and their community credit. The rivalry is so strong that in old days there was seldom a kayasa harvest without a war, or at least fights, to follow.

The gardens have a picturesque and festive appearance at this time. The uprooted heaps of taytu vine litter the soil with large, decorative leaves, shaped like those of the fig or of the grape. Among them groups of people are seated cleaning the yams and arranging them, while gay parties of sightseers come and go through the welter of leaves. The copper-colour of their bodies, the red and Rh