Conjurors’ tricks formed a common source of amusement when idlers were gathered together, though in the minds of the priesthood they were regarded as powers to excite the fears and command the homage and obedience of the simple and weak-minded. Nearly all the priests gained and kept public patronage by juggling tricks, many of which were akin to those performed at English fairs and by street conjurors. One cannibal juggler would drink large draughts of cocoanut oil, swallow uncooked giant beans, eat fire, and chew the ends of trumpet-shells, while the astonished lookers-on shouted their plaudits or sat trembling in every limb at what to them appeared to be horrible realities. One great magician lives in the poetry of his country, because he possessed a spear that would spring into life at his bidding. With this living spear, glowing as if on fire with the life that was in it, he would go forth and hush the roaring of the waterfalls!
The cannibal poets, though unacquainted with anything like the “Seven Ages” of human life as pictured for us by our own Shakespeare, have nevertheless sketched fairly enough “Four Ages” in the following enigmatic and pictorial way, as I gathered from my garrulous friend Long-Emptiness, who always contributed largely to the general amusement at social gatherings.
“There is a little animal which at sunrise, and for a short while afterwards, has but one leg. As, however, the sun climbs upward, he gains four legs. Presently, when the sun is a little higher, and begins in good earnest his course towards mid-heavens and the west, this strange creature returns to the use of two legs! This may be said to be the longest and best stage of all. Then—
‘Last scene of all,
That ends this strange, eventful history,’
when the sun, or ‘Eye of Day,’ as the language poetically calls it, prepares to go down to enlighten the inhabitants of the spirit-world, and the wind spoken of before is abating, and a world is about to fall, this wonderful animal may be seen hobbling along on three legs.”
Though Englishmen would be ashamed to give this up, our cannibal fire-side company of minds more opaque, or hurrying off to dreamland, did so without a single mental effort; whereupon Long-Emptiness, assuming the air of the only wise savage present, ended the night’s amusements by thus untying the knot:—
“The little animal I have been telling you of is man, who for some time after his birth cannot move—he does nothing but lie still on the mat. This is the one-leg stage in man’s life. After a while the infant begins to crawl on all fours. This, clearly enough, is the four-leg era. But when the sun rises higher in the sky, the being which a few weeks ago could only travel by means of hands and knees, finds, after many falls and hair-breadth escapes, that he can stand sublimely on his feet. He has now entered on the two-leg stage. As, however, the sun goes to his setting, i.e., as man’s life wanes, ‘two-legs’ begin to tremble;—they can do duty no longer without the help of a third leg. ‘Give me my walking-stick,’ says the tottering old man, who now feels that he is come to the last stage of his earthly existence, even that of three legs. All beyond
‘Is second childishness and mere oblivion.’”
The close resemblance of the foregoing to the riddle the Sphinx propounded to Œdipus will be noticed. The Fijian author, however, had no inspiration from the white man. The similarity is another item in support of the theory that all these mythologies have a common origin, and that the Fijians were once in communication with Asiatic races.