basic trigger using OLD not working?

Hello all,

I am trying to a simple thing: create a log history of deletes, and
updates; but which I am having trouble getting to work in PG 7.4.7
(under Debian Linux 2.6.8).

I have reduced my code to the following trivial case:

Here is the code that creates the delete trigger:
create trigger PEDIGREES_hist_del_trig
AFTER DELETE
on PEDIGREES
EXECUTE PROCEDURE logPedigreesDel();

Here is the trigger code: (famindid is an integer field in the Pedigrees
table):

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION logPedigreesDel() RETURNS TRIGGER AS '
DECLARE
test integer;
begin
test := OLD.famindid;
RAISE EXCEPTION ''OLD.famindid = '', test;
return OLD;
end;
' LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Here is the error message returned:
psql:testphdtrig.sql:1: ERROR: record "old" is not assigned yet
DETAIL: The tuple structure of a not-yet-assigned record is indeterminate.
CONTEXT: PL/pgSQL function "logpedigreesdel" line 4 at assignment

Would *really appreciate* any suggestions! This could help us decide
whether to PostGres for a major project...

thanks --rick