[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]
198 MALEKULA with a gift of these animals. One or both of them will be sows, and in tirne they will bear young. By careful rearing and with a keen eye for lending and borrowing at a proï¬Åt, a woman may acquire no little wealth. In addition to these pigs of her own, a wife will have the guardianship of her husband's pigs. Thus each wife of a polygynous marriage is given ï¬Åve or six pigs by her husband which are said to be “ for her own ", and they are generally referred to as her property, but she has not the same right to do as she likes with them as she has over the pigs which she has earned ; she is indeed trustee rather than owner of her husband's animals. It may be questioned how far she truly “ owns " even the pigs acquired through her personal efforts, for should her husband die she has to part with them. At the ï¬Ånal death feast, nimasian, the widow must present these pigs to her dead husband's brother, son, or whoever is acting as master of the ceremonies. Yet though this gift is compulsory, it does not indicate that the pigs were i.n truth the property of the husband and are now being given to his heirs. Rather it shows indeed that they were the wife's property, since she is presenting them on this occasion just as other relatives present theirs.‘ Should the wife die before her husband, he for his part cannot retain the pigs which his wife had earned or reared, but must pay them at the death feast to her maternal uncle (or, if the true mother's brother be no longer alive, to someone of her near kinsmen in the maternal line who represents him), and this payment is said to be for the purpose of ensuring that the woman's spirit shall return, as is ï¬Åtting, to her rnother's village.‘ Apparently pigs are never killed except for feasts or as part of a special ceremony. The ordinary way of killing them is probably to club them to death by striking them on the forehead with a wooden, knee~shaped hanimer called in Scniang nzzai motomol (see Plate XIIA), but on ritual occasions this mode of death is reserved for animals of low grade only. For example, there is in the entrance rites of the Nalawan and Nimimgki I rnn is Deacon‘: inter ntntion oi the situation. n mull, however, he observed that unlike the other relatives who give gaigs at the nimasimn, the widow dbes not receive any in roeinn_oi-, at least, we ve no evidence to suggest: that sh: does. [See below, pp. saa-542.)-c. H. w. 1 According to one note n widow gives iini pigs to her husband’: inaooinai uncle for this sflrneapurpose (ivi flflmbflngj. This conflicts with what has been written above, and so with the statement unit it is the general rule for a nwll to give a pig to his mother's hlothei‘ that his soul inny roach the 1fl€tfl1"l viiiigo, Lluring the celebration of n Nalemaw or Nimangki feast. (See below.)-C. i-1. w.
