[5]. Published by Boosey & Co., London.
Holders was not one of the polished kind, but he was better, being a brave good-hearted fellow, and I liked his companionship all the more because he did not drink. Though I found drunken men amusing in my travels of the South Seas, my instincts secretly detested them, and gave me a kind of sorrow akin to sympathy for men so affflicted.
Eventually we both secured berths on a large schooner, bound for Fiji. On board was an American missionary who had not been long out from Home. He became very friendly with me, and I liked him very well, and there was a link of comradeship between us for we were both homesick. The crew were nearly all Samoans who cheerily sang the whole day and night. I slept in the deck-house with them as there was no room aft, where I should have slept, as we had four passengers. The skipper was never sober, and came to the deck-house one night and continued to sing. I think he had got the delirium tremens. He made us crowd sail on when it was blowing a gale and take sail in when a four-knot breeze was on; swore that he saw spirits dancing on the deck, and that the natives had put evil spirits and demons on his track. He went off to sleep at last, and I and the mate took charge of the ship and the passengers were much relieved, and the Samoans started off on their old idol songs ad libitum.
Two of them had fine voices; their songs were old folk-lore chants telling of South Sea heroes. I would get them to sing to me and so learnt them off by heart and played them on the violin, but the melodies all seemed to lose their wild atmosphere when played as simple strains and divided into bars, unwedded to the Samoan words and the intonation of the wild childlike voices of the Islanders. Most of the South Sea strains are in minor keys; I give you here as near as possible my own impression of the melodies as I heard them sung.
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[Music: Andante. Chant Style. Composed by A.S.M.
mp Lais
(Drums) ff lais ... lais ...
Copyright.]
When we arrived at Viti-Levu, I went ashore and stayed for several days and had the pleasure of hearing a Fijian princess sing native songs. She was a granddaughter of King Thakambau, and resided in one of the best houses in Suva, was a good hand at playing the guitar and took an interest in me, as I was a musician; her husband, a Fijian chief, had a deep mellow voice which was astonishingly musical for a Fijian, and they sang together to me in their native home, squatting on their mats side by side. The princess was a beautiful-looking woman for a full-blooded native, and I spent a good deal of time with them, and really appreciated her songs and playing. Some of the melodies she sang had the Western note in them. As near as I can I reproduce here one of my own impressions of a characteristic Samoan song’s note.
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