[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]
r Ii .,i 652 MALEKULA is one who acts as leader and bears the title Nimbatin Ncmughut Nogho or " Head man of the Nogho ". His residence is in the logho, and he is regarded as the life-giver and potential death- dealer for the whole district. As with the ordinary nemugh/ut nogho, the oï¬Åï¬Åce passes from father to son, but which house it is that always provides the Nimbatin Nemughut Nngha or which is his tagha stone is not recorded. On a certain day the women of Melpmes and other villages in the district are told that they are going to be shown Kabat. They are taken into the namwitildh (the house of Nimanin) and on their heads are mats brought from Lambumbu l ; then they are made to lie down in two rows and are covered with mats. The Nimbatin Nenwghut Nagho now repairs to the logho and, standing up, calls out the names of the tagha stones. As he calls cach name, the mmughut migho of the " house " descended from this stone goes up to it and sits upon it, he alone of all men having the right to do so. When all are seated a sort of council is apparently held. This being at an end all the namughut mgho, led by the Nimbatin Namughut N ogho, pass in procession to the namwitilï¬Åh. Here, each one has intercourse with each woman, a practice which necessarily violates all rules of clan exogamy and results in incest with even close blood relatives. The only explanation given for this ceremony is that it is done " to make men as Kabut had done ". The account of the ceremony of the washing of the body of Butwanabaghap, whereby the whole district is given fresh vitality, is rather confused. Apparently there is in the logho " a sort of mummy of the Kabat Butwanabaghap, which sits under a kind of stone house formed of a table-stone with three uprights. The mummy is said to be exactly like the dead man, only that it does not speak. It is not like a rumba‘/amp, but is the actual body. There is a corresponding ‘mummy’ of a woman in the women's house". This last is presumably the namwitildh; we are not told whether the body in it is that of 1 A migii note runs: “Women iii house wear mats Uh their heads which are brought imi Lamhumbu." The W68-Illll hi head-mats it associated with the wearing oi mat-strange, H15 perhaps indicative oi til! Cllf.IX3l mm-smiiei which have illflllhflliï¬Ål this district, thlt head-mats should be worn on this iiuiu OOcaEi0l'l. Further they BXB iihhiiimi, not irom MeWuD'5 neighbours iii the south but from Lamhumbu. In view nf the rm that the people oi this latter district are utterly l!lCl'BdllU1S of the existence oi the Noglio Tilabwa it is particularly ihcmiciiig that any object ï¬Åvlmected with it should come thence.—C. H. w. lAi
