girls would surround
her; whereupon they would all engage in a lascivious dance, with
outstretched arms, tripping in cadence to the accompaniment of a funeral
hymn or lamentation, which was chanted by a choir in honour of the dead.
After executing the dance, which would seem to have been intended to
attract the attention of the deceased and recall his wandering spirit,
they would stoop over the corpse, and cry, "He has not stirred! He
stirs not. Alas! alas! he is no more." It was only after they had thus
practised their seductions in vain on the dead man that the widow gave
way to her frantic outburst of sorrow by mauling herself with a sort of
saw.[88] This funeral dance a widow was apparently expected to renew in
public at every festival for months after the death. At a festival,
which he called the Feast of Calabashes, Melville saw four or five old
women, stark naked, holding themselves erect and leaping stiffly into
the air, with their arms pressed close to their sides, like sticks
bobbing up and down in water. They preserved the utmost gravity of
countenance, and continued their strange movements without a single
moment's cessation, though they did not appear to attract the
observation of the crowd around them. The American was told that these
dancing or leaping figures "were bereaved widows, whose partners had
been slain in battle many moons previously; and who, at every festival,
gave public evidence in this manner of their calamities."[89] When the
deceased was a chief, the lamentations and the dances went on day and
night for some time. A priestess or sorceress, in festal costume, led
the choir of female mourners and vaunted the exploits of the dead
warrior, recalling his mighty deeds and the incidents of his life. The
dances were accompanied by the music of drums. The crowd of spectators,
in their best array, ate and drank to repletion, and, flushed with
liquor, abandoned themselves to excesses which transformed the mortuary
chamber, lit up at night by smoky torches, into a scene of low
debauchery. From time to time remarks of a gross nature were addressed
to the dead man on the helpless condition to which he was reduced; and
now and then the women would slash their faces and breasts with
splinters of bamboo in the usual fashion. The orgy went on till the
provisions were completely exhausted, which might not be for a
considerable time, since hecatombs of pigs were sometimes slaughtered
for the purpose of celeb