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

544 MALEKULA
The disposal of the bones in the nembrmbrkon is a clan“arfair.
In addition there is an annual commemoration of the dead in
which the whole district takes part. This forms part of the
elaborate rites of the Neerew Rahulemp, which, as will be seen,
is also a combined yam harvest and fertility ceremony. On the
day of the festivities each village records its recent and its famous
dead by beating out on the gongs the rhythms of the Nimimgki
grades to which they belonged, after which they exchange yams
in memory of the dead, with a special ritual which will be
described in Chapter XXII.
i THE Rambaramp
Reference has already been made in several contexts to the
rambaramp. A rambammp is an efï¬Ågy of tree-fern which is
made as a commemorative statue of a man who has died.
According to a note in one of Deacon’s letters, only a man who has
purchased a certain carved image at entrance to one of the
Nimnngki grades has a rambammp made for him aiter his death,
but what this carved image was like we do not know. ~In the
fragmentary account of the entrance rites to Nimangki Ninlmu,
however, we are told that the introducer had cut for the candidates
a pole of umou wood, on which were carved “ faces of the ram-
baramp " ; for these faces the candidates paid, and it was stated
that only those men who had thus paid were entitled to a rumba-
ramp after their death, but that such a payment could be made
at entrance to other Nimamgki grades besides Nimm (see above,
pp. 328-9). It seems probable that the carved image referred to
in the letter is the same as the carved mmm pole. The actual size
of the rambammp itself, its decoration, and the care wiflu which
this is executed depend undoubtedly upon the rank of the
deceased in the Nalawan and Nimzmgki. It is made on or
shortly after the day on which the head is removed from the
corpse. Men go out into the bush and cut tree-fern, which they
bring back into the amel. From this the body is formed? The
legs and anns are made of smooth wooden poles, the proportions
of the limbs being checked by measuring them against the
bones of the dead man, and this framework is then covered with
a compost of the creeper nembrï¬Ål. This plant is extremely
‘ Martin Johnson (1922, p. 156) describes a. different process at Tonunan
Island, but this needs veriï¬Åc8.ti0n.—A. C. H,
Q