[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

CHAPTER IX
THE RITES OF BIRTH AND INITIATION
(a) Bmrn
It is believed in Seniang that a Woman cannot have a child
unless she has previously had intercourse with a man. There
appears, however, to be no clear idea as to what role the semen
(ninggir) plays in producing a child. The popular idea seems
to be that the stoppage of the menstrual flow (ilis 11em'ei) causes
an accumulation and congestion of blood inside the womb. This
accumulated liquid is called mzwei m'mb’in, and it is the continual
accumulation and concentration of this that forms the child.
One informant said that they formed their ideas of how a child
grew inside its mother from observing what happened in the
hatching of a chicken. The checked menstrual flow is supposed
to form into a kind of “ yolk â€ù and the child to form out of this
yolk as a chicken out of the egg. Nevertheless, although con-
ception is recognized as a natural process, it is not left entirely
to nature. The desire for children was, there is good reason to
believe, as strong among the Malekulans before the coming of
the white man as it is among most of the backward peoples,
and not only was an annual ceremony performed in most of the
districts to ensure the fertility and health of their MEMBERS, but
private rites were also celebrated to render individual women
fruitful. Thus in Seniang, if a man wishes his wife to -become
pregnant, he stands in front of her, with his back towards her,
and then taking a number of coco-nuts he bends down and hands
these to her between his legs so that they pass beneath his
genitals. She now eats these coco-nuts, and for every such
coco-nut eaten she will conceive (isiien) one child. Tota, who
gave this information, added that his mother had eaten ï¬Åve of
these c0co—nuts and had had ï¬Åve boys, of which he was one.
It is not quite clear whether this rite is performed for all married
women, and is regarded as essential to bring about conception,
or whether it is only resorted to in the event of a woman being
23!