and the people, waving their
flaming torches in the air. After that they began to ascend the mound,
whereupon all the people rose up together and made a loud crashing noise
by snapping their _bolatas_, which were pieces of the stem of a banana
tree used to receive the ashes falling from lighted torches. Having done
so, the people followed the torch-bearers in single file up the mound
and walked in procession round about the tomb (_fytoca_). As they passed
at the back of the tomb, they all, torch-bearers and people, deposited
their extinguished torches on the ground; while the female mourners
within thanked them for providing these things. Having thus marched
round, the people returned to their places and sat down. Thereupon the
master of the ceremonies came forward and ordered them to divide
themselves into parties according to their districts; which being done
he assigned to one party the duty of clearing away the bushes and grass
from one side of the grave, and to another party a similar task in
regard to another side of the grave, while a third party was charged to
remove rubbish, and so forth. In this way the whole neighbourhood of the
burial-ground was soon cleared, and when this was done, all the people
returned to the temporary houses which, as mourners, they were bound to
occupy.[231]

[231] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, ii. 215-217.

Soon after darkness had fallen, certain persons stationed at the grave
began again to sound the conches, while others chanted a song, or rather
recitative, partly in the Samoan dialect, partly in an unknown language,
of which the natives could give no account. None of them understood the
words, nor could they explain how their forefathers came to learn them.
All that they knew was that the words had been handed down from father
to son among the class of people whose business it was to direct burial
ceremonies. According to Mariner, some of the words were Tongan, and he
thought that the language was probably an old or corrupt form of Tongan,
though he could make no sense out of it. Such traditional repetition of
a litany in an unknown tongue is not uncommon among savages; it occurs,
for instance, very frequently among some of the aboriginal tribes of
Australia, where the chants or recitatives accompanying certain dances
or ceremonies are often passed on from one tribe to another, the members
of which perform the borrowed dance or ceremony and repeat by rote the
borrowed chants