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Updated: May 26, 2025
I spent most of the time out of doors, rather than in the gamal, for there many of the dancers of the evening lay in all directions and in most uncomfortable positions, beside and across each other, snoring, shivering or staring sulkily into dark corners.
In the afternoon about sixty pigs were tied to poles in front of the gamal, and the chief took an old gun-barrel and smashed their heads. They represented a value of about six hundred pounds! Dogs and men approached the quivering victims, the dogs to lick the blood that ran out of their mouths, the men to carry the corpses away for the feast. This was the prosaic end of the great "sing-sing."
The village seems quite deserted, and we peep cautiously into the interior of the gamal, where, after a while, we discern a man, lying on the damp and dirty ground, who stares at us in silent fright. He gets up and comes slowly out, and we can see that he has lost half of one foot from leprosy.
In short, it was a lendemain de fête of the worst kind. About once in a quarter of an hour a man would come to bring a tusked pig to the chief, who danced a few times round the animal, stamped his heel on the ground, uttered certain words, and retired with short, stiff steps, shaking his head, into the gamal. The morning was over by the time all the pigs were ready.
The highest castes sit at the front end of the gamal, the lower at the back; these are forbidden to enter the gamal from the front, in order not to touch or step over the fireplaces of their superiors. At each rise in caste the novice receives the new fire, rubbed on a special stick and decorated with flowers; certain ceremonies attend the cooking of the first food with this new fire.
We men soon withdrew to the gamal, where the men likewise had to be informed of everything relating to our doings and character. The gamal was low and dirty, and the state of health of the inhabitants still worse than in the first village, but at least there were a few more babies than elsewhere.
Shortly afterwards the real ceremonies began, with the killing of about two hundred young female pigs which had been kept in readiness in little bamboo sheds. Accompanied by the drums, Palo led all the high-castes in dancing steps out of the gamal and round the square. After a few turns the chiefs drew up in line in front of him, and he mounted a stone table, while everyone else kept on dancing.
The lower jaws of the tuskers were cut out separately and handed over to Palo, to be cleaned and hung up in his gamal in the shape of a chandelier, as tokens of his rank. Palo is a weather-maker. When we prepared to go home, he promised to smooth the sea, which was running too high for comfort, and to prevent a head-wind.
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