Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/198

Rh Other distributions follow at stated intervals. There is one expressly for women mourners; one for the tenders of the grave; one for the rank and file of mourners; one, by far the largest, in which presents of valuables and enormous quantities of food are given to the widow and children, in so far as they, in grief and piety, have used the bones of the dead man for their lime-chewing or as ornaments. This intricate series of distributions stretches out into years, and it entails a veritable tangle of obligations and duties; for the members of the deceased's sub-clan must provide food and give it to the chief organizer, the headman of the sub-clan, who collects it and then distributes it to the proper beneficiaries. These, in their turn, partially at least, re-distribute it. And each gift in this enormous complex trails its own wake of counter-gifts and obligations to be fulfilled at a future date.

The ostentation with which the widow and children have to display their grief, the thickness—literally and metaphorically speaking—with which they put on their mourning are indeed striking; and the underlying complex psychology of these things must have become apparent in the above account. In the first place, it is a duty towards the dead and towards his sub-clan, a duty strongly enjoined by the code of morals and guarded by public opinion, as well as by the kinsmen. "Our tears—they are for the kinsmen of our father to see," as one of the mourners simply and directly told me. In the second place, it demonstrates to the world at large that the wife and children were really good to the dead and that they took great care of him in his illness. Lastly, and this is Rh