Warfare is carried on at the present day in Samoa just as the scriptures tell us it used to be in Palestine and Syria, and as Homer tells us it was waged on the plains of Troy. When two opposing bodies meet, the leaders challenge and abuse each other in good set terms, each boasting of his own prowess, depreciating that of the adversary, and threatening after he has killed his enemy to dishonor his corpse in some way. Thus, we find that when David had accepted the challenge of Goliath, before they proceeded to action they reviled each other, Goliath threatening to give David’s flesh unto the “fowls of the air and the beasts of the field,” and David retorting in almost the same words, but adding that he would do the same by the bodies of the whole army.
Thus, in the old Homeric story, where Ulysses flings his spear at Socus, he uses almost exactly the same formula of words:—
“Ah, wretch! no father shall thy corpse compose,
Thy dying eye no tender mother close;
But hungry birds shall tear those balls away,
And hovering vultures scream around their prey.”
Thus, the Fijian warrior defies his enemy in words before he proceeds to blows, threatening to bake and eat his body and make a drinking-cup of his scull. Thus, the Samoan war parties always think it necessary to pause and defy each other in words before they proceed to blows. For example, when the Manono and Aâna men fought in the struggle which has just been described, they exchanged threats and injurious epithets wonderfully like the “winged words” of the Homeric warriors, the sentiment being identical, though the imagery is necessarily different. The [illustration No. 1], on page 1027, shows these Samoan warriors exchanging defiance with their foes.
“You banana-eating Manono men, be your throats consumed by Moso.”
“Ye cocoa-nut eating Aâna men, be your tongues wasted.”
“Where is that Savii pig that comes to his death?”