were not confined to them. No sooner did the
tidings spread, and the sound of wailing was heard throughout the
neighbourhood, than friends and kinsfolk flocked to the spot and joined
in the demonstrations of real or affected sorrow. The pageant of woe
reached its climax when the deceased was a king or a principal chief. It
was then, above all, that the tenants and retainers came armed with
bludgeons and stones, with which they fought each other till some of
them were wounded or slain; while others operated on themselves by
tearing their hair and lacerating their bodies in the usual manner till
their bodies were bedabbled with blood. After the introduction of
firearms into the islands, these lethal weapons lent variety and noise
to the combats, as well as adding to the number of the slain. At the
death of a person of distinction these exhibitions of frenzied sorrow
sometimes lasted two or three days in succession, or even longer.[185]
On such occasions a body of armed men, composed of friends and allies,
used to arrive from a neighbouring district and request to be allowed
access to the body of the chief, in order that they might mourn for him
in due form. The request was always refused by the bodyguards, who kept
the last vigil over their departed lord; and in consequence a fight
ensued in which several warriors were generally wounded or killed. Yet
it was only a sham fight, which seems to have always ended in a victory
for the mourners who had come from a distance; and when it was over,
victors and vanquished regularly united in performing the usual
sanguinary rites of mourning. In all the islands wrestling matches,
combats, and assaults-at-arms were ordinary features of the obsequies of
chiefs.[186]

[185] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 407-409; J. Wilson,
_op. cit._ p. 352; J. A. Moerenhout, _op. cit._ i. 546 _sq._

[186] J. A. Moerenhout, _op. cit._ i. 551 _sq._

The blood which women in the paroxysms of grief drew from their bodies,
and the tears which flowed from their eyes, were received on pieces of
cloth, which were then thrown upon or under the bier as oblations to the
dead.[187] Sometimes for this purpose a woman would wear a short apron,
which she held up with one hand, while she cut herself with the other,
till the apron was soaked in blood. Afterwards she would dry it in the
sun and present it to the bereaved family, who kept it as a token of the
estimation in which the departed had b