This is the situation until the first party of women, generally accompanied by men, begin to come in from other villages of the same, and probably of one or more other, communities. These people have been laughing and playing and enjoying themselves on their way to the village, and do so freely until they get close to it. Then they commence wailing (not the funeral song) and shouting, calling the deceased by a relationship term, such as father, brother, etc., though they may never have heard of him before; and, doing this, they enter the village, and go to the house. The incoming women, but not the men, all arrive smeared with mud. The women crowd into and about the house, still wailing as before, but not the funeral song. They all see the body; and each woman, after seeing it, comes out and sits on the platform of the house or on the ground outside. The party of outside village women then cease their first wailing, and commence the funeral song, in which they are joined by the female relatives of the deceased and other women of the village. But again this only lasts for a few minutes, the period being longer or shorter according to the importance of the person who has died.
Other similar parties, coming in from other villages, go through the same performance as they come into the village; and in each case, as the women of each fresh party come out of the house after seeing the corpse, there is a fresh outburst of the funeral song on the part of all the women present, but always only for a few minutes. This goes on till the last batch of visitors has arrived. The people of the village know when this last batch has come, because they have been told by cross-valley shouting which villages are sending parties. The total number of women in the village is then generally very large. After the last batch of visitors has arrived, and until the funeral ceremony, all the women again break out into the funeral song for a few minutes about once an hour in the daytime, but not so often at night.
The funeral takes place probably about twenty-four hours after death. The body is now wrapped up by the special woman attendant, helped by the female relatives of the deceased, in leaves, especially banana leaves, and bark of trees, and remains so wrapped up in the house.