Nevinbumbaau is the great ogress of Malekula, a female ghost-being of enormous size with long sharp nails and an appetite for human flesh. She is best known from the tale in which she murders a woman of the culture-hero's household, flays her and wears the skin to take her place, keeping up the imposture until Ambat detects it and escapes her. Beyond the narrative she has a ritual life: in the Nevinbur cycle of the men's secret society she is made present as a towering female effigy shown to initiates, so that the ogress of story and the fearful figure of the rite are one. Layard, comparing her with the devouring guardian of the road of the dead, reads her as an expression of the terrible-mother theme that runs through Malekula belief.