The ceremony of removal of the mourning may take place after an interval of only a week or two, or of so much as six months, the date often depending upon the occurrence of some other ceremony, at which the removal of the mourning can be carried out without necessitating a ceremony for itself only. Visitors from some other community attend. The ceremony only applies to the nearest relative--the person who wears the string necklace; but, on his or her mourning being ceremoniously removed, the mourning of all others in respect of the same deceased ceases automatically. [103] This nearest relative has to provide a village pig. There is a feast, and dancing and pig-killing and distribution of food and pig, in the usual way, and this may be in the village of the deceased or in some other village of the community. The pig-killing is done by the pig-killer under the platform of a chiefs platform grave, or on the site of it. The pig, specially provided by the nearest relative, is bought and paid for by some person, as in the case of some of the ceremonies already described, and this person, after the killing of the pig, without special ceremony, cuts off the mourner's string necklace, dips it in the blood of the pig, and throws it away; then he takes some coloured paint, usually red, and with it daubs two lines on each side of the face across the cheek of the mourner, who of course at this ceremony will still have his black paint. If the mourner has been refraining from food, instead of wearing the necklace, the ceremony is confined to the paint-daubing. Then the mourner pays this ceremonial pig-buyer for his services, probably in feathers or dog-teeth, and the mourning is at an end.
There will at a later date be a purification ceremony, at which wild pigs will be killed, such as has already been described. [104]
A dying chief is attended by the special woman and others in the way above described, except that many women of the clan are there, and that this special attendance and its accompanying wailing begin earlier, perhaps two or three days earlier, than in the case of an ordinary person, and that all the women of the clan who are not in the house wail outside it.
In this case, however, there is a special ceremony for ascertaining whether or not the chief is in fact going to die--a ceremony which is usually performed at his own request. Some vegetable food, probably sweet potato, or perhaps sugar-cane or taro, is given him to eat; and this he will do although he may be very ill, and may not have been taking food, though of course, if he were insensible or unable to eat, this special ceremony could not be carried out. The inedible portions of this food, _e.g.,_ the peel of the potato or the hard fibres of the sugar-cane, are then handed to certain magical persons of the community, whose special duty it is to perform the ceremony about to be described, but as to whom I was unable to ascertain who and what they are, and whether they have any other special functions besides those of this ceremony. Some of these portions of food may even be sent to some similar magic person of high reputation in another community, in order that he also may perform the same ceremony. Each of these magic persons also has handed to him a portion of a perineal band belonging to, and recently worn by, the ailing chief.