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

THE VILLAGE AND VILLAGE LIFE 27
secret name of Tivutip, Looru that of Reimbi, and Benaur that
of Arnel Tamat. In what way these names are sacred is not
clear, nor is it certain whether they are known only to the men.
It is stated, however, that although children are often called
after a village with which they are connected through some
circumstance of their birth, a girl is never called by the sacred
name of hcr village. Thus a woman of Ndawu might be called
Vindawu, but never Vitiv'utip.1
The villages of Mewun are, it seems, similar i.n plan to those
of Seniang, though our evidence for this is, it must be confessed,
largely negative. They too have, in many instances, a public
and a secret name, as, for instance, Alou, Lambatip, Lokhbagalou,
Melalai, Ventiktik, and Melpmes, whose secret names are
Loormweil, Timbiilet, Loormbalau, Loormbarap, Mahunevet,
and Evi.ln'as respectively. Further, every place in Mewun has the
name by which the people of that district refer to it, and a different
one which is used for it by the people of Seniang. The latter is
never spoken by those who belong to Mewun when they are in
their own country, for it is said that to do so would be "like a
curse ", but they employ it when they are visiting their neighbours
to the south. The meaning of the village names is generally not
recorded, but it is interesting that Mclpmes, the name of the
most important of all the Mcwun villages, is a contraction of
aynel-ja-mes, meaning " the flmel which makes people die ". This
‘designation is connected with the belief that the clan-magician
.of'iMelpmes ‘can spread death and sickness throughout the land
as ,well.as their converse, life and fertility.
. In; the districts of the north-west, Lamhumbu, Laravat,
and Lagalag, although the social structure of the village is the
same as in the south, the way in which it is built is different.
For the most part each village is composed of a rather straggling
arrangement of houses built along either side of a street and
screened by woods and scattered open copscs, with the lodges of
the secret societies hidden away in the head of some creek or
gully, and the men's club~house in a prominent position on the
dancing ground. In marked contrast to these straggling villages
of the plains are the bush villages, built in the mountainous
1 It is curious that in his notes Deacon uses the sacred names of villages
Es igmwonly as, even if not rather more often than, he uses their public 0nesi—