[214] Compare Levy Bruhl, p. 389. The idea that mourning is performed in order to express sorrow, apart from its being obvious in the ceremonies themselves, is realized and formulated by the natives. When a very old and decrepit woman dies, or an old man who has lost his memory and is useless in tribal matters, the natives do not perform any elaborate ceremonies. They allege as a reason that they "do not feel enough sorrow for them."[215] [215] Spencer and Gillen, on the Central and North Central tribes (more especially the Kaitish and Unmatjera), _Nor. Tr._, p. 506. Ceremonies involving the motive of sorrow are mentioned in several places by Spencer and Gillen. Among the Arunta, "when a man dies his special _Unawa_ or _Unawas_ smear their hair, faces and breasts with white pipeclay and remain silent for a certain time until a ceremony called _Aralkililima_ has been performed."[216] The widow has a special name. In some of the northern tribes she has to keep silence. _E. g._ "Among the Warramunga ... the widows are not allowed to speak for sometimes as long a period as twelve months, during the whole of which time they communicate only by means of gesture language."[217] Among the Arunta the widow has to live in the woman's camp and suspend, to a large extent, her usual occupations.[218] When she wishes the ban of silence to be removed, she has to perform a ceremony in public, which consists in the main in an offering of vegetable food to the younger brother and sons of the deceased. "The meaning of this ceremony, as symbolized by the gathering of the tubers or grass seed, is that the widow is about to resume the ordinary occupations of a woman's life, which have been to a large extent suspended, while she remained in camp in what we may call deep mourning."[219] Analogous ceremonies of nearly the same duration and involving similar ordeals and privations, are in use in some other tribes: among the Kaitish and Unmatjera the widow has her hair cut off, she has to smear her body over with ashes, during the whole time that mourning lasts, _i. e._ several months, she has also to keep silence.[220] Amongst all these tribes the women inflict upon themselves the most cruel wounds. "The women seem to work themselves up into a perfect frenzy, and to become quite careless as to the way in which they cut and hack themselves about, with, however, this restriction notable on all such occasions, that however frenzied they apparently become, no vital part is injured, the cutting being confined to such parts as the shoulders, scalp, and legs."[221] The authors give a detailed description of such ordeals undergone by two widows of deceased men in the Warramunga tribe. "The actual widow scores her scalp with a red-hot firestick."[222] [216] _Nat. Tr._, p. 500. [217] _Nat. Tr._, p. 500. Compare also _Nor. Tr._, p. 525. [218] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 501, 502. [219] _Ibid._, p. 502. [220] _Nor. Tr._, p. 507.