“You will find your wife has left it in the pot on the fire to keep warm.”
In no sweet mood my gentleman removed the banana leaf wrapping from the top of the pot, and the smell made him wonder what he was going to have for supper. He certainly was not prepared for the new dish his wife had concocted. The first thing his wooden fork brought out of the pot was a bunch of his much-prized feathers. Then followed his pearl shell breast ornament, his armlets, his necklaces, and all the articles of personal adornment upon which he had so prided himself, and by way of gravy his precious paints.
His temper was not improved when he found his neighbours, who were in the secret, laughing at him, and delivering a farewell message from his wife, to the effect that she was tired of doing all the work and providing all the food. If he would not make a garden he had better try to live on his ornaments.
What became of the man for a time I do not know, but the woman continued to live with her father at a neighbouring village.
About a year later she found, morning by morning, a fine bunch of bananas on the verandah of the house, and told her father it was evident someone wished to marry her. Her father kept watch and found it was the former husband who was putting the bananas on the verandah, and knowing his character, asked him from whose garden he had stolen them. With a meekness quite new to him the husband replied that he had not stolen them at all. They were grown in his own new garden, the result of his own work, and he had brought them to show his wife that he had learnt his lesson, and could, and would, provide food for her and the children, if she would return to him. She did return to him, and they lived happy ever afterwards.
John Bunyan tells us that he and his wife started life “as poor as poor might be, not having as much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us both.” The young Papuan couple are not quite so badly off as that, but few of us would like to set up housekeeping with their scanty stock. The bride will at least have a few pots, perhaps the result of her own work, or if she lives in a district where pots are not made, procured by barter from another district. She will have at least one big spoon, made by fastening part of a cocoanut shell to the end of a stick, and perhaps a smaller spoon also cut from cocoanut shell and carved. Her wardrobe will vary according to the district in which she lives, and may be as extensive as a few fibre skirts, or as scanty as a length of parcel string, or be absolutely nothing. Arms and ornaments are what the bridegroom brings to the common stock, for his clothes are scarcely worth counting.
Rocking the Cradle.
In time the cradle is wanted, and the young mother has not been able to buy one after the English pattern; but fortunately most of the real wants can be supplied by what grows around the native home, and the cradle comes from the banana plant. The fibre found in the stump is cleared of the soft pith that surrounds it, washed clean, and then twisted into a string as fine and nearly as evenly laid as whip cord; and the woman does all the twisting by rubbing the fibre between her hand and her thigh. When she has her string she makes the big bag that serves for the cradle, dyeing portions of the string as she goes along so as to work out her pattern. All the work is done without shuttle, mesh, or needle of any kind, and in the most used pattern there is only one length of string and only two knots—one at the beginning and one at the end of the work.