Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land: A story of old Fiji

by Henry Britton

All the geological changes alluded to in the country’s legends are attributed to the miraculous power of the old gods. Here some mighty divinity, influenced by the spirit of revenge, has dug down the tops of cone-shaped hills that were carrying their heads too high. In the laborious undertaking he conveyed away the earth in enormous baskets slung at the ends of a long pole resting on his Herculean shoulders, as the manner of bearing heavy burdens sometimes is in Fiji. Dropping portions of this earth as he passed along the shores of the larger islands, he caused to grow up therefrom many of those lovely islets which add charm to charm, and give to scenery in the South Seas such enchantment. In this and that place, reefs and portions of reefs that were in the way, roaring too loud, or offering too many advantages to an enemy, have been kicked further off, broken down, had gaps knocked in them where gaps were dreaded, or stopped up where they were most prized, while rocks and points of land have been altogether submerged; and all by the passionate, capricious, miracle-working gods of this people, who, more perhaps than any other savage race on the earth’s face, were “in all things eminently religious.”

Tortuous and dark as all this of necessity is, it helps us to increase our knowledge of the cannibal and his religion; while the fractions of scientific truth, though conveyed in broken echoes from dark and unexplorable caverns, tell us of changes which the forces of nature have made in this southern world—changes so stupendous that the unphilosophising brain of the cannibal could not allow them to be forgotten, but must needs report them in the history of every god, interlace them with the inventions of every legend, and embalm them in the wild effusions of every poet.

II.

CHIEF OF GODS AND MEN.

Dengeh (spelt Degei in Fijian) is chief of gods and men.

The tops of the “Screw-pine Hills” on the north side of Viti Levu are his abode, and a serpent is his shrine. Two of the most sacred and prominent objects in cannibal mythology are the screw-pine or pandanus tree and the snake. The best emblems of the old religion of the country would be a fine screw-pine with red, ripe fruit at its top, a large snake coiled up asleep under its supporting roots, and a fine bright-feathered cock, its legs decorated with pure white cowrie shells, close by, crowing away with all his might to wake the dreaded sleeper. Fiji adds another to the already long list of countries in which the serpent was either worshipped or regarded in various degrees with reverential awe.

Dengeh was the acknowledged father of all gods next in rank to himself, and, through these, of other ranks. He was likewise the creator of men. We are told in some of the legends that although he was the generally admitted father of all, yet he himself had an ancestor. But this seems very much like an afterthought of some of our cannibal historians, who can never rest till they succeed in tracing the precise ancestral line of everybody worthy of notice. While the priests of inferior and more modern deities told the people that the fathers of their gods were such and such great heroes, the priests of Dengeh made reply on his behalf by pointing triumphantly to a rock which lay in the bed of a stream in the immediate neighborhood of the god’s mountain. “That stone,” said they, “is his father.” This, doubtless, was symbolical, and the symbols, a snake and a rock (in their interpretation) are one and the same. If the serpent is the universal emblem of eternity, not less so of uninterrupted duration is the rock. The name Dengeh has been defined to mean immortal. The Fijians have been heard to say of an old man distinguished for his extreme age and undiminished strength, “He is as immortal as Dengeh.” Others have maintained that the original meaning of the word is “to shake,” as when an eggshell is shaken. This is backed up by the statement that whenever the god turns about or trembles in his cave the earth shakes and quakes exceedingly. His priests imitated him in this habit of shaking. The Fiji world was, no doubt, very “shaky” at one time—so much so that Dengeh, in all likelihood, never turned or shook without causing an earthquake. There are slight shocks even now, especially on the western end of what is called the “great land,” but their force is not what it was when Fiji was less of an island country than it is to-day, and Dengeh was without a rival. The Fijian believed that the shaking of his serpent-enshrined god was as much a fact as the shaking of the ground under his feet, and he believed that the latter was but one of the many natural effects of the former. To him, therefore, Dengeh was inferior in nothing to a god of greater pretensions and far greater race, the

“Mighty Poseidon ...

Who shakes the world with his earthquakes.”

There was a periodical shaking of the god which was anything but calamitous, for a whole train of blessings followed it, and its non-occurrence, while always deprecated, had sometimes to be most deeply deplored. The cannibal was sure that when Dengeh shook the earth by shaking himself, the rains descended in their season; when he shook it again the fruit trees became laden with luscious fruit; and yet again, behold the yam crops grew to be the finest ever seen. When, unhappily, Dengeh stopped shaking there came a change over the face of the earth and its people began to fade and perish. By these teachings we are able to enter the cannibal mind, and to read therein his recognition of the kindly revolution of the seasons, and of the wakeful presence of some hidden but competent power to keep those seasons ever moving round.