V
Let us now give the text of the remaining spells which belong to the above narrative, but have not been adduced there, so as not to spoil its flow. First of all there is the kaytaria spell, that which the toliwaga, drifting alongside his crew on the detached canoe float, intones in a loud, slow voice, in order to attract the iraviyaka.
Kaytaria Spell.
“I lie, I shall lie down in my house, a big house. I shall sharpen my ear, I shall hear the roaring of the sea—it foams up, it makes a noise. At the bottom of Kausubiyai, come, lift me, take me, bring me to the top of Nabonabwana beach.”
Then comes a sentence with mythological allusions which I could not succeed in translating. After that follows the main part of the spell:
“The suyusayu fish shall lift me up; my child, the suyusayu shall lift me up; my child’s things, the suyusayu shall lift me up; my basket, etc.; my lime pot, etc.; my lime spoon, etc.; my house, etc.;” repeating the words “the suyusayu fish shall lift me up” with various expressions describing the toliwaga’s equipment as well as his child, presumably a member of the shipwrecked crew.
There is no end part to this spell, as it was given to me; only the beginning is repeated after the main part. It is not impossible that Molilakwa himself, my informant, did not know the spell to the end. Such magic, once learnt by a native, never used, and recited perhaps once a year during a mortuary ceremony, or occasionally, in order to show off, is easily forgotten. There is a marked difference between the vacillating and uncertain way in which such spells are produced by informants, and the wonderful precision and the easy flow with which, for example, the spells, year after year performed in public, will trip off the tongue of the garden magician.
I cannot give a correct commentary to the mythological names Kausubiyai and Nabonabwana, in the first part of the spell. What this part means, whether the reclining individual who hears the noises of the sea is the magician, or whether it represents the sensations of the fish who hears the calling for help, I could not make out. The meaning of the middle part is plain, however. Suyusayu is another name for iraviyaka, indeed, its magical name used only in spells, and not when speaking of it in ordinary conversations.
The other formula to be given here is the other giyorokaywa spell, which would be used in spitting the ginger on the beach after rescue, and also in medicating the herbs, which will be put on the beach and beaten with a stone. This spell is associated with the myth of the origin of kayga’u, which must be related here, to make the formula clear.
Near the beginning of time, there lived in Kwayawata, one of the Marshall Bennetts, a family strange to our ideas of family life, but quite natural in the world of Kiriwinian mythology. It consisted of a man, Kalaytaytu, his sister, Isenadoga, and the youngest brother, a dog, Tokulubweydoga. Like other mythological personages, their names suggest that originally they must have conveyed some sort of description. Doga means the curved, almost circular, boar’s tusk used as ornament. The name of the canine member of the family might mean something like Man-with-circular-tusks-in-his-head, and his sister’s name, Woman-ornamented-with-doga. The eldest brother has in his name the word taytu, which signifies the staple food (small yams) of natives, and a verb, kalay, signifying ‘to put on ornaments.’ Not much profit, however, can be deduced from this etymology, as far as I can see, for the interpretation of this myth. I shall quote in a literal translation the short version of this myth, as I obtained it first, when the information was volunteered to me by Molilakwa in Oburaku.
Myth of Tokulubwaydoga.
“They live in Kwayawata; one day Kalaytayta goes to fish, gets into a small canoe (kewo’u). Behind him swims the dog. He comes to Digumenu. They fish with the older brother. They catch fish! The elder brother paddles; that one again goes behind; goes, returns to Kwayawata. They died; came Modokei, he learned the kayga’u, the inside of Tokulubwaydoga. The name of their mother, the mother of Tokulubwaydoga, is Tobunaygu.”
This little fragment gives a good idea of what the first version is, even of so well fixed a piece of narrative as a myth. It has to be supplemented by inquiries as to the motives of the behaviour of the various personages, as to the relations of one event to the other. Thus, further questions revealed that the elder brother refused to take the dog with him on this fishing expedition. Tokulubwaydoga then determined to go all the same, and swam to Digumenu, following the canoe of his brother. This latter was astonished to see him, but none the less they went to work together. In fishing, the dog was more successful than his brother, and thus aroused his jealousy. The man then refused to take him back. Tokulubwaydoga then jumped into the water, and again swam and arrived safely in Kwayawata. The point of the story lies in the fact that the dog was able to do the swimming, because he knew the kayga’u, otherwise the sharks, mulukwausi, or other evil things would have eaten him. He got it from his mother, the lady Tobunaygu, who could teach him this magic because she was a mulukwausi herself. Another important point about this myth, also quite omitted from the first version volunteered to me, is its sociological aspect. First of all, there is the very interesting incident, unparalleled in Kiriwinian tradition: the mother of the three belonged to the Lukwasisiga clan. It was a most incongruous thing for a dog, who is the animal of the Lukuba clan, to be born into a Lukwasisiga family. However, there he was, and so he said:
“Good, I shall be a Lukuba, this is my clan.”
Now the incident of the quarrel receives its significance in so far as the dog, the only one to whom the mother gave the kayga’u, did not hand it over to his brother and sister who were of the Lukwasisiga clan, and so the magic went down only the dog’s own clan, the Lukuba. It must be assumed (though this was not known to my informant) that Madokei, who learnt the magic from the dog, was also a Lukuba man.
Like all mythological mother-ancestresses, Tobunaygu had no husband, nor does this circumstance call forth any surprise or comment on the part of the natives, since the physiological aspect of fatherhood is not known among them, as I have repeatedly observed.
As can be seen, by comparing the original fragment, and the subsequent amplification by inquiries, the volunteered version misses out the most important points. The concatenation of events, the origin of the kayga’u, the important sociological details, have to be dragged out of the informant, or, to put it more correctly, he has to be made to enlarge on points, to roam over all the subjects covered by the myth, and from his statements then, one has to pick out and piece together the other bits of the puzzle. On the other hand, the names of the people, the unimportant statements of what they did and how they were occupied are unfailingly given.
Let us adduce now the kayga’u, which is said to be derived from the dog, and ultimately from his mother:
Kayga’u of Tokulubwaydoga.
“Tobunaygu (repeated), Manemanaygu (repeated), my mother a snake, myself a snake; myself a snake, my mother a snake. Tokulubwaydoga, Isenadoga, Matagagai, Kalaytaytu; bulumava’u tabugu Madokei. I shall befog the front, I shall shut off the rear; I shall befog the rear, I shall shut off the front.”
This exordium contains at first the invocation of the name of the mulukwausi, who was the source of the spell. Its pendant Manemanaygu is, according to my informant, derived from an archaic word nema, equivalent to the present day yama, hand. “As the right hand is to the left one, so is Tobunaygu to Manemanaygu,” which was expressed as a matter of fact in the less grammatically worded form; “this right hand, this left” (clapped together) “so Tobunaygu, Manemanaygu.”
Whether this analysis of my informant is correct must remain an open question. It must be remembered that magic is not taken by the natives as an ethnographic document, allowing of interpretations and developments, but as an instrument of power. The words are there to act, and not to teach. Questions as to the meaning of magic, as a rule, puzzled the informants, and therefore it is not easy to explain a formula or obtain a correct commentary upon it. All the same there are some natives who obviously have tried to get to the bottom of what the various words in magic represent.
To proceed with our commentary, the phrase “My mother a snake, etc.,” was thus explained to me by Molilakwa: “Supposing we strike a snake, already it vanishes, it does not remain; thus also we human beings, when mulukwausi catch us, we disappear.” That is, we disappear after having spoken this magical formula, for in a formula the desired result is always expressed in anticipation. Molilakwa’s description of a snake’s behaviour is, according to my experience, not sound Natural History, but it probably expresses the underlying idea, namely the elusiveness of the snake, which would naturally be one of the metaphorical figures used in the spell.
The string of words following the invocation of the snake are all mythical names, four of which we found mentioned in the above myth, while the rest remain obscure. The last-named, that of Modokei, is preceded by the words bulumavau tabugu, which means, ‘recent spirit of my ancestor,’ which words are as a rule used in spells with reference to real grandfathers of the reciters.
The middle part of the spell proceeds:—
“I shall cover the eyes of the witches of Kitava; I shall cover the eyes of the witches of Kumwageya; I shall cover the eyes of the witches of Iwa; I shall cover the eyes of the witches of Gawa, etc., etc.,” enumerating all the villages and islands renowned for their witches. This list is again recited, substituting for the expression “I shall cover,” in succession, “I shall befog,” and “dew envelopes.” This middle part needs no commentary.
The end of this formula runs as follows:
“I shall kick thy body, I shall take thy spirit skirt, I shall cover thy buttocks, I shall take thy mat, a pandanus mat, I shall take thy mantle. I shall strike thee with my foot, go, fly over Tuma, fly away. I myself in the sea (here the reciter’s name is mentioned), I shall drift away, well.” This last part of the spell is so much alike to the end of the spell first quoted in this chapter, that no commentary is needed.
The mythological and magical data presented in this chapter all bear upon the native belief in flying witches and dangers at sea, a belief in which elements of reality are strangely blended with traditionally fixed fancies, in a way, however, not uncommon to human belief in general. It is time now to return to our party on the beach at Yakum, who, after having spent the night there, next morning rig up their masts, and with a favourable wind, soon reach the waters of Gumasila and Domdom.
[1] Professor Seligman has described the belief in similar beings on the North-East Coast of New Guinea. At Gelaria, inland of Bartle Bay, the flying witches can produce a double, or “sending,” which they call labuni. “Labuni exists within women, and can be commanded by any woman who has had children …. It was said that the labuni existed in, or was derived from, an organ called ipona, situated in the flank, and literally meaning egg or eggs.” op. cit., p. 640. The equivalence of beliefs here is evident. [↑]
[2] Not all the spells which I have obtained have been equally well translated and commented upon. This one, although very valuable, for it is one of the spells of the old chief Maniyuwa, and one which had been recited when his corpse was brought over from Dobu by his son Maradiana, was obtained early in my ethnographic career, and Gomaya, Maradiana’s son, from whom I got it, is a bad commentator. Nor could I find any other competent informant later on, who could completely elucidate it for me. [↑]
[3] Such reconstructions are legitimate for an Ethnographer, as well as for a historian. But it is a duty of the former as well as of the latter to show his sources as well as to explain how he has manipulated them. In one of the next chapters, [Chapter XVIII, Divisions XIV–XVII], a sample of this methodological aspect of the work will be given, although the full elaboration of sources and methods must be postponed to another publication. [↑]