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

DEATH AND DISPOSAL or Tl-IE DEAD 543
but according to Layard (206) in the event of a young child's
death only the mother goes into mourning.
It is the widow whose conduct is most carefully restricted
and regulated. Until the time when the pigs are paid after the
death-feast for the destroying of the fence and the loosening
of the mourning she remains inside the house, crouched beside
her husband's bier and hidden from view by the fence at its
foot. She tends the ï¬Åre and smears herself with its ashes. If
her dead husband's brother is a good man, he, or some of his
kinsmen, will see to it that she is supplied with food. But not
infrequently he will be very angry with her, saying that she is
responsible for her husband's death, and he will neglect attending
to her in any way. Then her own clansmen or father or brother
will visit her and bring her food. In either case she is only allowed
to eat very, very little. She may not leave the house alone, in
any circumstances. Early morning and evening, some woman,
generally the wife of one of her dead husband's brothers, comes
to her and takes her to the latrine, but these are the only occasions
on which she goes out of the hut. During her seclusion no man
may speak to her. Were anyone to do so, the friends and clans-
men of the deceased would suspect that this man had secretly
wished to have her as his wife and had, therefore, sought magical
means to kill her husband. Consequently, they might wreak their
wrath on him who had infringed this tabu of silence.
MEMORIALS or THE DEAD
After the corpse has decayed and the skull has been removed
from it to form the head of the memorial effigy, the remaining
bones are left on the stretcher. In the chapter dealing with
totemisrn, the annual fertility ceremony or nearew of the clan
will be described. ’It is on this occasion that the bones of all
those who have died within the year are gathered together and
placed in the nembrmbrkon, the sacred ground, of the clan, which
is both its religious centre and its charnel-house. On the death
of Apwll Naandu only the smaller bones were thus disposed of,
for the limb bones were kept in the new umel which was built
on the occasion of the “ making " of Nalmmm M brillendew in
his memory. This, however, was rather exceptional, and
would only be done for a man of importance.