and wailing frantically with their arms round each other, while
the actual and tribal wives, mothers, wives' mothers, daughters,
sisters, mothers' mothers, sisters' husbands' mothers, and
grand-daughters, according to custom, once more cut their scalps open
with yam-sticks, and the widows afterwards in addition seared the scalp
wounds with red-hot fire-sticks.

[Sidenote: Cuttings for the dead strictly regulated by custom.]

In these mourning customs, wild and extravagant as the expression of
sorrow appears to be, everything is regulated by certain definite rules;
and a woman who did not thus maul herself when she ought to do so would
be severely punished, or even killed, by her brother. Similarly with the
men, it is only those who stand in certain relationships to the deceased
who must cut and hack themselves in his honour, and these relationships
are determined by the particular exogamous class to which the dead man
happened to belong. Of such classes there are eight in the Warramunga
tribe. On the occasion described by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen it was a
man of the Tjunguri class who died; and the men who gashed their thighs
stood to him in one or other of the following relationships: grandfather
on the mother's side, mother's brother, brother of the dead man's wife,
and her mother's brother.[239]

[Sidenote: The cuttings and brandings which mourners inflict on
themselves may be intended to convince the ghost of the sincerity of
their sorrow.]

We naturally ask, What motive have these savages for inflicting all this
voluntary and, as it seems to us, wholly superfluous suffering on
themselves? It can hardly be that these wounds and burns are merely a
natural and unfeigned expression of grief. We have seen that by
experienced observers such extravagant demonstrations of sorrow are set
down rather to fear than to affection. Similarly Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen suggest that at least one motive is a fear entertained by the
native lest, if he does not make a sufficient display of grief, the
ghost of the dead man will be offended and do him a mischief.[240] In
the Kaitish tribe of Central Australia it is believed that if a woman
does not keep her body covered with ashes from the camp fire during the
whole time of mourning, the spirit of her deceased husband, who
constantly follows her about, will kill her and strip all the flesh from
her bones.[241] Again, in the Arunta tribe mourners smear themselves
with white pipecla