Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/250

Rh of the baloma in the dream the abdomen begins to swell; and when this stage in a first pregnancy is reached, the relatives of the mother-to-be take steps to provide her with certain ceremonial garments prescribed by custom; a plain white fibre petticoat, and a long cloak {saykeulo) of the same material (pl. 42). These will be given to her in about the fifth moon of her pregnancy with a great deal of ceremony, and she will wear them on that occasion for a month or two and also after she has given birth to the child. This ceremony is never performed for an igamugwa, a woman who has already been pregnant, but only for an igava'u a woman who conceives for the first time.

As with every other ceremonial occasion in the Trobriands, this presentation of the fibre cloak has its place in a definite sociological scheme. The duties connected with it are distributed among certain relatives who subsequently receive an appropriate payment. The task of making the robes and of offering them to the igava'u falls to the female relatives of the girl's father—the women whom she calls generically tahugu— and the lead is taken by the father's own sister. We have already seen on an earlier occasion of great importance in the life of a girl, namely when her marriage is about to be concluded, that it is the father, and not her official guardian, the mother's brother, whose consent is decisive and who has to supervise the whole affair. Again, in this later crisis, it is the father and his matrilineal kinswomen who take the active part. The father summons his sister, his mother, and his xiiece, and says to them: "Well, come to my house and cut Rh