Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/75

Rh of them, some in couples facing each other and some singly, move in a slow dance, forwards and backwards across the central place, to the rhythm of the wailing dirge (see pl. 11). As a rule, each of them carries in her hand some object worn or possessed by the deceased. Such relics play a great part in mourning and are worn by the women for a long time after their bereavement. The wrapping up of the corpse and the subsequent vigil over the grave is the duty of yet another category of the dead man's womenkind.

Some functions of burial, notably the gruesome custom of cutting up the corpse, are performed by men. In the long period of mourning which follows, the burden of the dramatic expression of grief falls mostly on the women; a widow always mourns longer than a widower, a mother longer than a father, a female relative longer than a male of the same degree. In the mortuary distributions of food and wealth, based on the idea that the members of the deceased's sub-clan give payment to the other relatives for their share in the mourning, women play a conspicuous role, and conduct some parts of the ceremonial distributions themselves (see pl. 12).

I have barely touched on the mortuary ceremonies, as we shall have to return to them presently (ch. vi, secs. 3 and 4), but I have said enough to show how large a share women take in this class of religious or ceremonial display. Some tribal ceremonies in which women alone are active will be described in detail later, and it is only necessary here to state briefly that in the long and complicated ceremonial of first pregnancy (ch. viii, secs. I and Rh