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

542 MALEKULA . . £1
of pig’s flesh there was also a genuine exchange of vegetable
foodstuffs between visitors and hosts. Again, the wife's brother 1“
is said to bring a pig " with which they pay back the dead man's
people for the pig which they killed at his death â€ù. Now, as has
been shown, the brother of the widow, through his sister, makes
three gifts of pigs to the nearest male relative of the deceased;
one for " destroying the fence â€ù, another for " loosening the
mourning ", and the third for separating her from her husband's
people so that she may return to her own home. The problem
is whether the pig given " for the pig which they killed at his I
[the deceased’s] death " represents a fourth payment or whether
it is really one of the payments recorded by Deacon, the real
signiï¬Åcance of which Layard’s informant failed to explain.
There are two occasions of pig-giving reported by Layard to
which Deacon makes no reference at all. After the covering
of the corpse, but before it is carried back into the house, the
men of the deceased's village present a pig together with a yam
and two coco-nuts to the visitors from some one village with
which the dead man was not on friendly terms or which was a
long way from his village. Again, on the clay of the funeralâ€ù,
feast "a further pig is killed and given to the people of the ‘
hostile or distant village mentioned above". These are both
distinct from the pig which is successively offered to and refused
by increasingly distant friends of the dead man. It may be
that these were presentations which Deacon overlooked, or
perhaps they were made only under special circumstances, or it
is possible that Layard‘s informant was confusing them with
some other pig-giving rites.
Mouzmmc .
The sign of mourning is to smear the body and face with
white ashes. The chief mourners are the close male relatives of
the deceased, the brothers, sons, grandsons, and sisters’ sons,
and also the widow. These remain in the hut where the corpse
is laid out to decompose until the day of the death-feast, when,
as has been described above, they are freed from their mourning
by the ritual exchange of pigs. There is no record of the behaviour
of female relatives such as the mother, sisters, and father’s sisters,