When a band of warriors returns victorious, they are met by the women; but "the words of the women's song may not be translated; nor are the obscene gestures of their dance, in which the young virgins are compelled to take part, or the foul insults offered to the corpses of the slain, fit to be described…. On these occasions the ordinary social restrictions are destroyed, and the unbridled and indiscriminate indulgence of every evil lust and passion completes the scene of abomination" (43). Yet,
"voluntary breach of the marriage contract is rare in comparison with that which is enforced, as, for instance, when the chief gives up the women of a town to a company of visitors or warriors. Compliance with this mandate is compulsory, but should the woman conceal it from her husband, she would be severely punished" (147).
EMOTIONAL CURIOSITIES
When Williams adds to the last sentence that "fear prevents unfaithfulness more than affection, though I believe that instances of the latter are numerous," we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by a word. Fijian "affection" is a thing quite different from the altruistic feeling we mean by the word. It may in a wife assume the form of a blind attachment, like that of a dog to a cruel master, but is not likely to go beyond that, since even the most primitive love between parents and children is confessedly shallow, transient, or entirely absent. Williams (154, 142) "noticed cases beyond number where natural affection was wanting on both sides;" two-thirds of the offspring are killed, "such children as are allowed to live are treated with a foolish fondness"—and fondness is, as we have seen, not an altruistic but an egoistic feeling. In writing about Fijian friendships our author says (117):
"The high attainments which constitute friendship are known to very few…. Full-grown men, it is true, will walk about together, hand in hand, with boyish kindliness, or meet with hugs and embraces; but their love, though specious, is hardly real."
Obviously the keen-eyed missionary here had in mind the distinction between sentimentality and sentiment. Sentimentality of a most extraordinary kind is also found in the attitude of sons toward parents. A Fijian considered it a mark of affection to club an aged parent (157), and Williams has seen the breast of a ferocious savage heave and swell with strong emotion on bidding a temporary farewell to his aged father, whom he afterward strangled (117). Such are the emotions of barbarians—shallow, fickle, capricious—as different from our affection as a brook which dries up after every shower is from the deep and steady current of a river which dispenses its beneficent waters even in a drought.
FIJIAN LOVE-POEMS
In his article on Fijian poetry, referred to in the chapter on Coyness, Sir Arthur Gordon informs us that among the "sentimental" class of poems "there are not a few which are licentious, and many more which, though not open to that reproach, are coarse and indecent in their plain-spokenness." Others of the love-songs, he declares, have "a ring of true feeling very unlike what is usually found in similar Polynesian compositions, and which may be searched for in vain in Gill's Songs of the Pacific." These songs, he adds, "more nearly resemble European love-songs than any with which I am acquainted among other semi-savage races;" and he finds in them "a ring of true passion as if of love arising not from mere animal instinct but intelligent association." I for my part cannot find in them even a hint at supersensual altruistic sentiment. To give the reader a chance to judge for himself I cite the following:
I
He.—I seek my lady in the house when the breeze blows, I say to her, "Arrange the house, unfold the mats, bring the pillows, sit down and let us talk together."