lages, and even to other communities. The man being dead,
the wailing of the women inside and outside the house is changed into
a true funeral wailing song; but this latter only continues for a few
minutes. The special woman and some others, probably relatives only,
remain in the house; but they do not touch the body at this stage. The
other women, probably non-relatives, go out. The relatives of the
deceased, both men and women, immediately smear their bodies with mud,
but no one else in the village does so.

This is the situation until the first party of women, generally
accompanied by men, begin to come in from other villages of the
same, and probably of one or more other, communities. These people
have been laughing and playing and enjoying themselves on their way
to the village, and do so freely until they get close to it. Then
they commence wailing (not the funeral song) and shouting, calling
the deceased by a relationship term, such as father, brother, etc.,
though they may never have heard of him before; and, doing this, they
enter the village, and go to the house. The incoming women, but not
the men, all arrive smeared with mud. The women crowd into and about
the house, still wailing as before, but not the funeral song. They
all see the body; and each woman, after seeing it, comes out and sits
on the platform of the house or on the ground outside. The party of
outside village women then cease their first wailing, and commence
the funeral song, in which they are joined by the female relatives
of the deceased and other women of the village. But again this only
lasts for a few minutes, the period being longer or shorter according
to the importance of the person who has died.

Other similar parties, coming in from other villages, go through the
same performance as they come into the village; and in each case, as
the women of each fresh party come out of the house after seeing the
corpse, there is a fresh outburst of the funeral song on the part of
all the women present, but always only for a few minutes. This goes on
till the last batch of visitors has arrived. The people of the village
know when this last batch has come, because they have been told by
cross-valley shouting which villages are sending parties. The total
number of women in the village is then generally very large. After the
last batch of visitors has arrived, and until the funeral ceremony,
all the women again break out into the funeral song for a f