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26
commencement. However as soon as the elders have decided that they have had enough of it, the men in charge of the boys will collect some leafy boughs under cover of which - just like a moving forest - they ^all march back ^towards the original camp. Before reaching it however they stop at another cleared ring-space with its accompanying lean-to shed, and stand up in two rows - the novitiates in the front: in the meantimes the mothers (blood or group) of the lately initiated youths are allowed to approach, each woman coming close up with a leafy bough and switching it lightly across the thighs of her own particular boy, who thereupon enters the lean-to where he has a short spell. Having rested awhile, the snake-corrobborre is performed in the ring, and then, as often as not, some wrestling matches take place. At last they all return to the actual original camp, where the novitiates now occupy the bachelor's quarters. Some time subsequently, depending upon the season etc. the young fellow commences to eat certain of the foods that have previously been forbidden to him : the first that he is allowed to partake of being the wó-kí yan, none of these food-stuffs however is he allowed to speak of their right name, to specialise: he must generalise them all as bán-díl-má-já. Furthermore, during this period, all women and any uninitiated males are strictly forbidden to touch etc anything that he has eaten from or drunk of. At length, he gets his nose pierced by an individual known as the pé-wúl, (sometimes a woman), one being appointed for each novitiate, whose duty it is acquaint him with the relationship etc he now bears to other members of the tribe: from this time onwards the young man never speaks of or to his "pewul" ^by name unless there happens by chance to be some blood feud springing up between them. It is only subsequently to the initiation ceremony that the young men are taught to use the "bull-roarers" (sect. 48). The initiation ceremony Hislop is firmly convinced that no moral laws or prin-ciples [principles] are inculcated during the initiation procedure,
[note in left hand margin [indecipherable] last one, many months later, being the [indecipherable] hen's eggs.
[note in left hand margin - of course in a few [indecipherable]several minor details of the initiation ceremony have been omitted - such however can be added to later - W.E.R]