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

1
,
r
THE NIMANGKI AND NELEMEW 367
Filin Mal and his two sons take up their stand in front of the
towers, and men of his village haul up to him those of his pigs
with which he will pay for the yams. The names of the contributors
are then called out, and one by one each man goes up, stands by
the yam tower in which his contribution has been placed, and
takes from the top of it one yam which he holds up. Filin Mal
takes the tethcr of one of the pigs and gives it to this man, who
in return, hands his yam to Filin Mal’s son, who is standing beside
his father, The giving of this yam, taken from the top of the pile,
expresses publicly the ‘ sale ’ of the yams of that tower to Filin
Mal. When all the contributors of yams have come up and
performed the same ceremony, they retire, and the main business
of the Nimangki is proceeded with. Filin Mal calls out the names
of the two principal sellers, Ronglili and Siul, who step forward
and take up a position near the two highest towers. He then
recites the yarn-giving iormula, at the end of which Ronglili and
Siul each touches one of the tubers in the tower by which he is,
and the coco-nuts set in the mound before it. One of these sellers
now retired, but the other remained to recite the yam-giving
iormula for the payment of the two other sellers who were ot less
importance. I was told that he did this in order to instruct Filin
Mal‘s sons in the necessary words. These two subsidiary sellers,
Tesnrel oi Levuvwa, mid Belni, stepped up to two of the smaller
towers and received them in the same way as Ronglili and Siul
had done.
“ The atmosphere of these yam- or pig-distributions is rather
that oi a dole distribution or of a Christmas-tree. There is at
good deal of biting wit from discontented recipients-—' injured ’
friends oi the buyer of the Nimangki. For example, on this
occasion, Tesnrel and Belni, who should presumably have been
given yam towers of equal height, received ones of unequal size.
I was sitting near the village group of the recipient of the smaller
tower when he returned from the yam-presentation, and heard some
caustic remarks made by his friends and directed towards Filin
Mal. One old man, assuming an ironically paternal tone, explained
to the injured man : ' You see, you're no good [i.e. inferior] ; they
don't give you the big tower. You're no good ; you can't expect
to get what X— [the other recipient] gets,’ and he continued in
this vein for a little while so that all the bystanders could hear.
I believe that Filin Mal made good the defect later.‘
“When this yam-giving ritual was ended, it was near sunset.
The towers were dismantled and the visitors departed with their
yams, to return again for a continuance of the Nimangki on the
morrow.â€ù
During this evening, after the visitors had gone home, the
two small daughters of Filin Mal were invested with new names,
which were purchased in the ceremony called mbat mew from
‘ It seems from the account that each -seller received Only one tower. There
W_ere altogether seven towers, but We are not told to whom the other three were
gAven.—C. H. W.