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Updated: May 11, 2025
In Vao conditions are not quite so bad, because there is considerable wealth, and women are numerous, so that even young men are enabled to have a family; in consequence, the race here is healthier than elsewhere. In Vao I had occasion to attend a death-feast.
The bards have sung the praise of Dermid in strains which history accepts: they praise his ruddy aspect and laughing teeth; they remember how he upheld the standard of war, and none dared contend with him in battle; they denounce vengeance on Meath as soon as his death-feast is over a vengeance too truly pursued.
My visit to the men's house ended, and seeing no prospects of acquiring any more curiosities, I went to the dancing-ground, where most of the men were assembled at a death-feast, it being the hundredth day after the funeral of one of their friends. In the centre of the square, near the drums, stood the chief, violently gesticulating.
The hero of the day was still alive and in excellent health; but he did not quite trust his family, and wishing to make sure that his death-feast would not be forgotten, he held it during his lifetime. His anxiety about the feast is explained by the following facts.
It is customary to hold a death-feast for a man of no caste after five days, for a low-caste after one hundred, and for a high-caste after three hundred or even one thousand days. The soul remains in contact with the world of the living, and may be perceived as a good or bad spirit of as much power as the man had when alive.
The bards have sung the praise of Dermid in strains which history accepts: they praise his ruddy aspect and laughing teeth; they remember how he upheld the standard of war, and none dared contend with him in battle; they denounce vengeance on Meath as soon as his death-feast is over a vengeance too truly pursued.
To-morrow, on the hundredth day, there was to be a death-feast, to which all the neighbours were invited. Of course, this man, too, had been poisoned. The fire of revolt was smouldering in my boys.
When a chief died, the execution did not take place at once. The body was exposed in a special little hut in the thicket, and left to decay, which process was hastened by the climate and the flies. Then a death-feast was prepared, and the widows, half frantic with mad dancing and howling, were strangled. Ordinary people are buried in their own houses, which generally decay afterwards.
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