For Parents Only

Lock Snipping Ceremony

Its Fun-But For Parents Only

By W. H. Percival

FN Rarotonga (Cook Islands) to- L day one still occasionally sees a boy with shoulder-length hair, ’hese long-haired boys are the Idest sons or the favourite adopted 3ns of local families, and have been bliged by their parents or guardians 3 remain unshorn until a hair atting ceremony can be arranged.

During this ceremony the boy sits q a chair, wearing girl’s clothes nd with his tresses arranged in iris or tufts—of a sufficient number >r the family head of each group : guests to snip one off. The care illy selected guests each bring a ft for “the girl” who has now be ime a boy—presumably to give him good start in life. The hair itting is followed by a feast, organ -3d on as lavish a scale as the ►y’s family can afford.

This peculiar custom does not >pear to have any connection with e various “initiation” rights known other parts of the world, and lich concern the passing from olescence to manhood. It may ce place when the boy is any age )m about 10 to 21, and is purely social event, which is now dying Did Rarotongan residents recall it 40 years ago, long-haired boys, ne of whom wore their hair in .its, were a fairly common sight, t to-day they are seldom seen, rhe hair-cutting ritual was not 3wn before the arrival of the ssionaries, and to-day nobody ms to have any idea as to how custom started. ’here is no doubt, however, that boys themselves are not in our of the idea. At school they teased and ridiculed until the elty wears off and they are illy accepted into the schoolboys’ :ernity. wo factors have considerable ring on the date on which the r-cutting ritual is performed. One be amount of successful pressure boy is able to put on his parents fet him out of his predicament; the other is the financial status lis family. the parents are comfortably off 7 will be able to stage an umukai st) that will augment their tige at a far earlier date than e not so fortunate. But in any it it seems that this custom will l be extinct, and Cook Islands hs of the future will have no e to feel shame because of their riant tresses. •robably the worst misery any

parent can inflict on a child is to deliberately make him (or her) look different from his school-mates —even in the sacred name of “look ing-smart.” PlM’s editor was re minded of such youthful troubles recently in a Sydney cafe where two teen-age boys were buying milk shakes. They wore inconspicuous grey, college-suits—and long-hair rolled up in a bun on top of their heads and secured in a hair-net.

They were said to belong to a re ligious sect called Israelites).

I The Mayor of Suva (Mr. A D Leys) and Mrs. Leys are at present m New Zealand on holiday. The Deputy Mayor (Mr. W. E. Goodsir) is acting as Mayor during Mr. Levs’s absence. J Miss Jean Innes, of the Gosford District, NSW, left for Santo, New Hebrides, in April to teach in the Presbyterian mission school there for the next 21 years.