Ligogu spell
„I shall take hold of an adze, I shall strike! I shall enter my canoe, I shall make thee fly, O canoe, I shall make thee jump! We shall fly like butterflies, like wind; we shall disappear in mist, we shall vanish. You will pierce the straits of Kadimwatu (between the islands of Tewara and Uwama), you will break the promontory of Saramwa (near Dobu), pierce the passage of Loma (in Dawson Straits), die away in the distance, die away with the wind, fade away with the mist, vanish away. Break through your seaweeds (i. e., on coming against the shore). Put on your wreath (probably an allusion to the seaweeds), make your bed in the sand. I turn round, I see the Vakuta men, the Kitava men behind me; my sea, the sea of Pilolu (i. e., the sea between the Trobriands and the Amphletts); to-day the Kudayuri men will burn their fires (i. e., on the shores of Dobu). Bind your grass skirt together, O canoe” (here the personal name of the canoe is mentioned), fly!” The last phrase contains an implicit hint that the canoe partakes of the nature of a flying witch, as it should, according to the Kudayuri myth.
After this, the canoe-builder proceeds to scoop out the log. This is a long task, and a heavy one, and one which requires a good deal of skill, especially towards the end, when the walls of the dug-out have to be made sufficiently thin, and when the wood has to be taken off evenly over the whole surface. Thus, although at the beginning the canoe carpenter is usually helped by a few men — his sons or brothers or nephews who in assisting him also learn the trade — towards the end he has to do the work single-handed. It, therefore, always happens that this stage takes a very long time. Often the canoe will lie for weeks, untouched, covered with palm leaves against the sun, and filled with some water to prevent drying and cracking (see Plate XXV). Then the carpenter will set to work for a few days, and pause again. In almost all villages, the canoe is put up in the central place, or before the builder’s hut. In some of the Eastern villages, the scooping out is done on the sea beach, to avoid pulling the heavy log to and from the village.
Parallel with the process of hollowing out, the other parts of the canoe are made ready to be pieced together. Four broad and long planks form the gunwale; L-shaped pieces of wood are cut into ribs; long poles are prepared for longitudinal support of the ribs, and for platform rafters; short poles are made ready as transversals of the platform and main supports of the outrigging; small sticks to connect the float with the transversals; finally, the float itself, a long, bulky log. These are the main, constituent parts of a canoe, to be made by the builder. The four carved boards are also made by him if he knows how to carve, otherwise another expert has to do this part of the work (see Plate XXVI).
When all the parts are ready, another magical rite has to be performed. It is called „kapitunela nanola waga”: „the cutting off of the canoe’s mind”, an expression which denotes a change of mind, a final determination. In this case, the canoe makes up its mind to run quickly. The formula is short, contains at the beginning a few obscure words, and then a few geographical references to some places in the d’Entrecasteaux Archipelago. It is recited over a few drops of coco-nut oil, which is then wrapped up in a small bundle. The same spell is then again spoken over the ligogu blade, round which a piece of dry banana has been wrapped in the manner described above. The canoe is turned bottom up, the bundle with coco-nut oil placed on it and struck with the adze. With this the canoe is ready to be pieced together, and the first stage of its construction is over.
III
As has been said above, the two stages differ from one another in the nature of work done and in their sociological and ceremonial setting. So far, we have seen only a few men engaged in cutting the tree and scooping it out and then preparing the various parts of the canoe. Industriously, but slowly and deliberately, with many pauses, they toil over their work, sitting on the brown, trodden soil of the village in front of the huts, or scooping the canoe in the central place. The first part of the task, the felling of the tree, took us to the tall jungle and intricate undergrowth, climbing and festooned around the fantastic shapes of coral rocks.
Now, with the second stage, the scene shifts to the clean, snow-white sand of a coral beach, where hundreds of natives in festive array crowd around the freshly scraped body of the canoe. The carved boards, painted in black, white and red, the green fringe of palms and jungle trees, the blue of the sea — all lend colour to the vivid and lively scene. Thus I saw the building of a canoe done on the East shore of the Trobriands, and in this setting I remember it. In Sinaketa, instead of the blue, open sea, breaking in a belt of white foam outside on the fringing reef and coming in limpid waves to the beach, there are the dull, muddy browns and greens of the Lagoon, playing into pure emerald tints where the clean sandy bottom begins.
Into one of these two scenes, we must now imagine the dug-out transported from the village, after all is ready, and after the summons of the chief or headman has gone round the neighbouring villages. In the case of a big chief, several hundreds of natives will assemble to help, or to gaze on the performance. When a small community with a second-rate headman construct their canoe, only a few dozen people will come, the relatives-in-law of the headman and of other notables, and their close friends.
After the body of the canoe and all the accessories have been placed in readiness, the proceedings are opened by a magical rite, called Katuliliva tabuyo. This rite belongs to the Kula magic, for which the natives have a special expression; they call it mwasila. It is connected with the inserting of the ornamental prow-boards into their grooves at both ends of the canoe. These ornamental parts of the canoe are put in first of all, and this is done ceremonially. A few sprigs of the mint plant are inserted under the boards, as they are put in, and the toliwaga (owner of the canoe) hammers the boards in by means of a special stone imported from Dobu, and ritually repeats a formula of the mwasila magic. The mint plant (sulumwoya) plays an important part in the mwasila (Kula magic) as well as in love spells, and in the magic of beauty. Whenever a substance is to be medicated for the purpose of charming, seducing, or persuading, as a rule sulumwoya is used. This plant figures also in several myths, where it plays a similar part, the mythical hero always conquering the foe or winning a woman by the use of the sulumwoya.