ABSTRACT
After spending three or four days weeping, and feasting, and dancing, the main body of mourners scatter to their homes, but the close kinsmen remain for a week or two sleeping at the home of the deceased, awaiting the ritual of farewell. Kasitile, the hereditary rain-maker of Selya, who was a close friend of Godfrey Wilson's, and formally presented him to his dead ancestors urging them 'not to be startled at a white face', was our foremost authority on the symbolism of the Selya ritual. The ritual begins in the evening, four or five days after the death. Of an unfinished death ritual people say: 'Tukali ukunkesya unsyuka,' ukukesya being the word used for bidding a courteous farewell to departing guests. A stem of plantains is 'stolen' from a friend's banana plantation, then the participants gather round the hearth and bid farewell to the deceased.
