Note 1 — Some other Ceremonies and Feasts

It is the custom among the Kuni people when any woman (not merely the wife of a chief) has her first baby for the women of her own village, and probably of some neighbouring villages also, to assemble in the village and to attack her house and the village club-house with darts, which the women throw with their hands at the roofs. At Ido-ido I saw that the roofs of the club-house and of some of the ordinary houses had a number of these darts sticking into them. The darts were made out of twigs of trees, and were about five or six feet long; and each of them had a bunch of grass tied in a whorl at or near its head, and some of them had a similar bunch similarly tied at or near its middle. See also Dr. Seligmann’s reference (Melanesians of British New Guinea, p. 298) to the Roro custom for warriors, when returning from a successful campaign, to throw their spears at the roof and sides of the marea. In Mekeo there is no corresponding ceremony on the birth of a first child; but men, women and children of the village collect by the house and sing all through the night; and in the morning the woman’s husband will kill a pig or dog for them, which they cook and eat without ceremony.