It was customary for widows to have one of their fingers cut off, and if they refused to submit to the operation, the posts and doorway of their houses were gashed and notched.[213] * * * * * Accounts of two interments which differed somewhat from the usual practice may be worth giving here. The first is that of "Distant," headman of Sáwi, who was buried with much pomp. The corpse was dressed in a good suit of English clothes, and silver wire was wound about it from head to feet. This was because he was once a _mafai_, and the usual ceremony of _Luinj-lare_ (renunciation of the character) had not been performed. Upon the wire, thirty-two pairs of spoons and forks were placed crosswise. Necklaces made of two-anna pieces (240 to each, and two dollars) were attached to head and neck, and the body was wrapped in forty yards of red cloth. The corpse was then borne in procession by twenty-four men and women to the house of the relatives (contrary to custom), and was then taken to the graveyard. Two very large and four ordinary pigs were burnt alive as a sacrifice, and seven pigs and eight chickens were buried with the body after their blood had been sprinkled over the corpse. The following night, the ceremony of _Fota Elmot_ (wiping away tears) was performed, on which occasion fifty pigs and twenty fowls were slaughtered to feed the guests, and thirty-two pairs of spoons and forks, necklaces of silver coin and wire, and teakwood boxes full of the dead man's property, were broken up and thrown into the sea. Again, on the eighth day, the final mourning ceremony was gone through, when, in honour of the thirteen villages of the island, thirteen pairs of spoons and forks, and sundry other articles, were destroyed, and the guests were entertained at a feast of equal munificence to that they had shortly before taken part in. The second case is that of a man, nearly one hundred years old, who owned a third part of the village of Lapáti. The body was neatly wrapped in cloths under a curtain in the "deadhouse." A sort of open coffin, about 7 feet long and 4 feet wide, was made, and six thick green canes were fastened to it, three to the head and three to the foot, each cane about 50 yards long. When all was ready the coffin was drawn into the "deadhouse" up a sloping plank, and when the corpse had been placed within, two women got in and lay on either side the body, embracing it with their arms. When the coffin was lowered to the ground two big men also laid themselves down in it. The large _Elpanam_ was filled with a crowd of about a thousand people, young and old, from other villages. Of these, a hundred from the southern and a hundred from the northern villages seized the long canes at either end, and dragged the coffin up and down in competition until the canes were broken, when, the grave being dug, the body was buried. This ceremony is performed only when those of the highest repute are interred.