Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/188

Rh Let us take the death of a man of consequence in the fulness of age, leaving behind a widow, several children and brothers. From the moment of his death, the distinction between his real, that is matrilineal, kinsmen (veyola) on the one hand, and his children, relatives-in-law and friends on the other, takes on a sharp and even an outwardly visible form. The kinsmen of the deceased fall under a taboo; they must keep aloof from the corpse. They are not allowed either to wash or adorn or fondle or bury it; for if they were to touch or to come near it, pernicious influences from the body would attack them and cause their disease and death. These pernicious influences are conceived in the form of a material exhalation, issuing from the corpse and polluting the air. It is called bwaulo, a word which also designates the cloud of smoke which surrounds a village especially on steamy, calm days. The necrogenic bwaulo, invisible to common eyes, appears to a witch or sorcerer as a black cloud shrouding the village. It is innocuous to strangers, but dangerous to kinsmen (ch. xiii, sec. i).

The kindred must also not display any outward signs of mourning in costume and ornamentation, though they need not conceal their grief and may show it by weeping. Here the underlying idea is that the maternal kinsmen (veyola) are hit in their own persons, that each one suffers because the whole sub-clan to which they belong has been maimed by the loss of one of its members. "As if a limb were cut off, or a branch lopped from a tree." Thus, though they need not hide their grief, they must not parade it. This abstention from outward mourning Rh