a custom.[214] No sooner was the king's body deposited
in the grave, and the great stone lowered over it, than certain
ministers (_matabooles_) and warriors ran like men frantic round and
round the burial-ground, exclaiming, "Alas! how great is our loss!
Finow! you are departed; witness this proof of our love and loyalty!" At
the same time they cut and bruised their own heads with clubs, knives,
and axes in the usual fashion.[215] Afterwards the grave was filled up
with earth and strewed with sand, which a company of women and men had
brought for the purpose in baskets from a place at the back of the
island; what remained of the sand was scattered over the sepulchral
mound (_fytoca_), of which it was deemed a great embellishment. The
inside of the burial-ground was then spread with mats made of coco-nut
leaves.[216]

[212] W. Mariner, _op. cit._ i. 144 note *.

[213] See above, p. 105.

[214] W. Mariner, _op. cit._ i. 388 note *.

[215] W. Mariner, _op. cit._ i. 388 _sq._

[216] W. Mariner, _op. cit._ i. 389-392.

Meantime the company of mourners had been seated on the green before the
burial-ground, still wearing their mourning garb of mats, with leaves of
the _ifi_ tree strung round their necks. They now arose and went to
their homes, where they shaved their heads and burnt their cheeks with a
lighted roll of bark-cloth, by applying it once upon each cheek-bone;
next they rubbed the place with an astringent berry, which caused it to
bleed, and afterwards they smeared the blood in a broad circle round the
wound, giving themselves a very ghastly appearance. They repeated this
friction with the berry every day, making the wound bleed afresh; and
the men meanwhile neglected to shave and to oil themselves during the
day, though they indulged in these comforts at night. Having burnt their
cheeks and shaved their heads, they built for themselves small temporary
huts, where they lived during the time of mourning, which lasted twenty
days.[217]

[217] W. Mariner, _op. cit._ i. 392 _sq._

The women who had become tabooed, that is, in a state of ceremonial
pollution, by touching the king's dead body, remained constantly within
the burial-ground for the twenty days of mourning, except when they
retired to one of the temporary huts to eat,[218] or rather to be fed by
others. For it was a rule that no ordinary person, man or woman, could
touch a dead chief without being tabooed, that is ceremoniall