HKB
and prefer to communicate with gestures--in which, by the way, they acquire a remarkable ability. Spencer and Gillen knew one old woman who had not spoken for over twenty-four years.[1240]
The ceremony which we have described opens a long series of rites which succeed one another for weeks and even for months. During the days which follow, they are renewed in various forms. Groups of men and women sit on the ground, weeping and lamenting, and kissing each other at certain moments. These ritual kissings are repeated frequently during the period of mourning. It seems as though men felt a need of coming close together and communicating most closely; they are to be seen holding to each other and wound together so much as to make one single mass, from which loud groans escape.[1241] Meanwhile, the women commence to lacerate their heads again, and, in order to intensify the wounds they make, they even go so far as to burn them with the points of fiery sticks.[1242]
Practices of this sort are general in all Australia. The funeral rites, that is, the ritual cares given to the corpse, the way in which it is buried, etc., change with different tribes,[1243] and in a single tribe they vary with the age, sex and social importance of the individual.[1244] But the real ceremonies of mourning repeat the same theme everywhere; the variations are only in the details. Everywhere we find this same silence interrupted by groans,[1245] the same obligation of cutting the hair and beard,[1246] or of covering one's head with pipe-clay or cinders, or perhaps even with excrements;[1247] everywhere, finally, we find this same frenzy for beating one's self, lacerating one's self and burning one's self. In central Victoria, "when death visits a tribe there is great weeping and lamentation amongst the women, the elder portion of whom lacerate their temples with their nails. The parents of the deceased lacerate themselves fearfully, especially if it be an only son whose loss they deplore. The father beats and cuts his head with a tomahawk until he utters bitter groans, the mother sits by the fire and burns her breasts and abdomen with a small fire-stick. Sometimes the burns thus inflicted are so severe as to cause death."[1248]
According to an account of Brough Smyth, here is what happens in one of the southern tribes of the same state. As the body is lowered into the grave, "the widow begins her sad ceremonies. She cuts off her hair above her forehead, and becoming frantic, seizes fire-sticks, and burns her breasts, arms, legs and thighs. She seems to delight in the self-inflicted torture. It would be rash and vain to interrupt her. When exhausted, and when she can hardly walk, she yet endeavours to kick the embers of the fire, and to throw them about. Sitting down, she takes the ashes into her hands, rubs them into her wounds, and then scratches her face (the only part not touched by the fire-sticks) until the blood mingles with the ashes, which partly hide her cruel wounds. In this plight, scratching her face continually, she utters howls and lamentations."[1249]
The description which Howitt gives of the rites of mourning among the Kurnai is remarkably similar to these others. After the body has been wrapped up in opossum skins and put in a shroud of bark, a hut is built in which the relatives assemble. "There they lay lamenting their loss, saying, for instance, 'Why did you leave us?' Now and then their grief would be intensified by some one, for instance, the wife, uttering an ear-piercing wail, 'My spouse is dead,' or another would say, 'My child is dead.' All the others would then join in with the proper term of relationship, and they would gash themselves with sharp stones and tomahawks until their heads and bodies streamed with blood. This bitter wailing and weeping continued all night."[1250]