[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]
468 MALEKULA TABUS must be observed. Thus, no one but the initiated per- formers may make any noise ; no one may break a stick, cut a coco-nut, climb a tree, or gather coco-nuts near the village. Absolute quiet must reign and infringement of any of these TABUS is punished by death. This extreme penalty is necessary, for the breach of these sacred rules would incur the wrath of the lmzs upon the whole group. When, in the course of conversa- tion with the men in the amzl at Lernbinewen, the etlmographer suggested that the performance was " play ", it was unanimously asserted that the Nzvinlmr was in no way " play " at all, In illustration of this the story was told of a man of Looru who, during a performance of the Neuinbur rites, speared his own son, who was one of the candidates, because the young man had treated one part of the ceremonial frivolously. The body was afterwards thrown over the fence, and cut up and eaten in the amel as a token of his degradation and the contempt in which he was held. This was probably an exceptionally rigorous punish~ ment, but the story, if true, and there is no reason not to believe it, illustrates the seriousness, not to say the sacredness, of the Navinbur. l Although an account of the N evinbur society and its ceremonies was obtained only from Seniang, there is clear evidence of its existence in Wien, and some rcason to suppose that it does or did exist in other districts lying to the east of this. Thus a drawing of one of the ï¬Ågures in the Museum of Ethnology at Cambridge was identiï¬Åed as belonging to the Nwinbur by an old man from a coastal village situated to the cast of Milip. Further, Amanrantus of Looremew deï¬Ånitely asserted that the Nevinlmr existed at Port Sandwich. This was supported by a man from Seniang who said that, when some years previously he had been at Port Sandwich, he had seen a mmbaramp, to the shoulders of which there were fastened two heads which were exactly like the Nevinbur heads attached to the rambammp of members of that society in his own district. Elsewhere in Malekula no evidence has come to light to suggest that any such society is known. It may well be, however, that it does exist in other parts, where, owing to the extremely sacred nature of its rites, it has still been kept a secret from strangers.‘ ‘V Apparently, tflo, the Na/inbm is known in Ambryrn, [or I brief note mentions the existence nl Mmsip in this island, at the village of Belap.—C. H. W.
