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

468 MALEKULA
tabus must be observed. Thus, no one but the initiated per-
formers may make any noise ; no one may break a stick, cut a
coco-nut, climb a tree, or gather coco-nuts near the village.
Absolute quiet must reign and infringement of any of these
tabus is punished by death. This extreme penalty is necessary,
for the breach of these sacred rules would incur the wrath of the
lmzs upon the whole group. When, in the course of conversa-
tion with the men in the amzl at Lernbinewen, the etlmographer
suggested that the performance was " play ", it was unanimously
asserted that the Nzvinlmr was in no way " play " at all, In
illustration of this the story was told of a man of Looru who,
during a performance of the Neuinbur rites, speared his own
son, who was one of the candidates, because the young man
had treated one part of the ceremonial frivolously. The body
was afterwards thrown over the fence, and cut up and eaten in
the amel as a token of his degradation and the contempt in which
he was held. This was probably an exceptionally rigorous punish~
ment, but the story, if true, and there is no reason not to believe
it, illustrates the seriousness, not to say the sacredness, of the
Navinbur. l
Although an account of the N evinbur society and its ceremonies
was obtained only from Seniang, there is clear evidence of its
existence in Wien, and some rcason to suppose that it does or
did exist in other districts lying to the east of this. Thus a
drawing of one of the ï¬Ågures in the Museum of Ethnology at
Cambridge was identiï¬Åed as belonging to the Nwinbur by an old
man from a coastal village situated to the cast of Milip. Further,
Amanrantus of Looremew deï¬Ånitely asserted that the Nevinlmr
existed at Port Sandwich. This was supported by a man from
Seniang who said that, when some years previously he had been
at Port Sandwich, he had seen a mmbaramp, to the shoulders of
which there were fastened two heads which were exactly like the
Nevinbur heads attached to the rambammp of members of that
society in his own district. Elsewhere in Malekula no evidence
has come to light to suggest that any such society is known.
It may well be, however, that it does exist in other parts, where,
owing to the extremely sacred nature of its rites, it has still
been kept a secret from strangers.‘
‘V Apparently, tflo, the Na/inbm is known in Ambryrn, [or I brief note
mentions the existence nl Mmsip in this island, at the village of Belap.—C. H. W.