Oceanic Mythology: Part II. Melanesia: Chapter III. Miscellaneous Tales
A VERY common class of tales in Melanesia deals with cannibals and monsters, and our discussion of the general or more miscellaneous group of myths may well begin with examples of this type. As told by the Sulka, a Papuan tribe of New Britain, 1 one of these stories runs as follows. Once there was a cannibal and his wife who had killed and eaten a great many persons, so that, fearing lest they should all be destroyed, the people resolved to abandon their village and seek safety in flight. Accordingly they prepared their canoes, loaded all their property on board, and made ready to leave; but Tamus, one of the women of the village, was with child, whence the others refused to take her with them, saying that she would only be a burden upon the journey. She swam after them, however, and clung to the stern of one of the canoes, but they beat her off, compelling her to return to the deserted village and to live there alone. In due time she bore a son, and when he grew up a little, she would leave him in her hut while she went out to get food, warning him not to talk or laugh, lest the cannibals should hear and come and cat him. One day his mother left him a dracaena-plant as a plaything, and when she was gone he said to himself, "What shall I make out of this, my brother or my cousin?" Then he held the dracaena behind him, and presently it turned into a boy, with whom he played and talked. Resolving to conceal the presence of his new friend, Pupal, from his mother, he said to her on her return, "Mother, I want to make a partition in our house; then you can live on one side, and I will dracaena. She was glad that her son now had a companion, and all three lived happily together. Tamus was, however, more than ever afraid that the cannibals would hear sounds, and suspecting the presence of people in the deserted village, would come to eat them; but the two boys reassured her, saying, "Have no fear; we shall kill them, if they dare to come." Accordingly, making themselves shields and spears, they practised marksmanship and also erected a slippery barricade about the house, so that it would be difficult to climb. When they had completed their preparations, they set up a swing near the house, and while they were swinging, called out to the cannibals, "Where are you? We are here, come and eat us." The cannibals heard, and one said to the other, "Don't you hear someone calling us over there? Who can it be, for we have eaten all of them." So they set out for the village to see what could have made the noise, the two boys being meanwhile ready in hiding. When the cannibals tried to climb the barricade, they slipped and fell, and the boys rushing out succeeded in killing them both after a hard fight. The children then called to the boy's mother, who had been greatly terrified, and when she came and saw both the cannibals dead, she built a fire, and they cut up the bodies and burned them, saving only the breasts of the ogress. These Tamus put in a coco-nut-shell, and setting it afloat on the sea, said: "Go to the people who ran away from here, and if they ask, 'Have the cannibals killed Tamus, and are these her breasts?' remain floating; but if they say, 'Has Tamus borne a son and has he killed the cannibals, and are these the breasts of the ogress?' then sink!". Another cannibal story which introduces interesting features is told in the New Hebrides. 3 There was once a cannibal named Taso, who came one day upon the sister of Qatu and killed her, but did not eat her because she was with child. So he abandoned her body in a thicket, and there, though their mother was dead, twin boys were born. 4 They found rain-water collected in dead leaves, and shoots of plants that they could eat; so they lived, and when they grew old enough to walk, they wandered about in the forest until one day they found a sow belonging to their uncle Qatu. He came daily to give it food, but when he had gone, the boys would eat part of the sow's provisions. Thus they grew, and their skins and hair were fair. Qatu wondered why his sow did not become fat, and watching, discovered the twins and caught them; but when they told him who they were, he welcomed them as his nephews and took them home with him. After they grew bigger, he made little bows of sago fronds for them, and when they could shoot lizards, he broke the bows, giving them larger ones with which they brought down greater game; and thus he trained them until they were grown up and could shoot anything. When they were young men, Qatu told then, about Taso and how he had murdered their mother, warning them to be careful, lest he should catch them. The twins, however, So they set off to kill Taso, but when they came to his house, he had gone to the beach to sharpen his teeth, and only his mother was at home. Accordingly they went and sat in the gamal, the men's house, to wait for him, and lighting a fire in the oven, they roasted some yams and heated stones in the blaze. Thereupon Taso's mother sang a song, telling him that there were two men in the gamal and that they should be food for him and for her; so the cannibal quickly returned from the shore, and as he came, he moved his head from side to side, striking the trees so that they went crashing down. When he reached the gamal, he climbed over the door-rail, but the boys immediately threw at him all the hot rocks from the oven and knocked him down, and then with their clubs they beat him until he was dead, after which they killed his mother, and setting fire to the house over them, went away. Now Qatu, hearing the popping of the bamboos as the house burned, said, "Alas, Taso has probably burned the boys!" Hastening to see what had happened, however, he met them on the way and heard from them that they had killed Taso and had revenged their mother whom he had slain. 6 Although greatly feared, and capable of destroying people in numbers, the cannibals are usually pictured as stupid and easily deceived, as shown in the following two tales. In a village lived four brothers, the eldest of whom one day took his bow and went out to shoot fish. Those which were only wounded he buried in the sand, and so went on until his arrow bit and stuck in the trunk of a bread-fruit-tree; whereupon, looking up and seeing ripe fruit, he climbed the tree and threw several of them down. An old cannibal heard the sound as The next day the second brother went off, followed his brother's tracks, imitated his procedure, and came back with fish and fruit; the third brother did the same on the following day; and then it came the turn of the fourth to go. He, however, failed to bury the wounded fish, but killed them, and when the cannibal asked him to call his brothers, there was no reply. "Aha," said the cannibal, "now I have got you. You must come down from the tree." "Oh, yes!" said the youngest brother, "I shall come down on that tree there." Quickly the ogre took his axe and cut down the tree, and in this way he felled every one that stood near. "Now, I surely have you," said he, but the youngest brother replied, "No, I will come down on your youngest daughter there." So the cannibal rushed at her and gave her a fatal blow; and thus the man in the tree induced the stupid monster to kill all his children and his wife and lastly to cut off his own hand, whereupon the man came down from the tree and slew the ogre. 7 The following story 8 presents striking features of agreement with certain Indonesian tales. A man and his family had dried and prepared a great quantity of food, which they stored on a staging in their home; and one day, when the man had gone off to his field to work, a cannibal came to the house, FIG. 1. NATIVE DRAWING OF A SEA-SPIRIT These spirits are thought to live far out at sea and are usually malevolent. They shoot men with flying fish and are supposed to travel in waterspouts or on the rainbow. San Cristoval, Solomon Islands. After Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 259. which he returned and repeated his request, thus carrying away all the food which the people had stored. Finally he seized the woman and her children, shut them up in a cave, and went away, so that when the husband returned, he found his house empty. Searching about, he at last heard his wife The theme of the woman abandoned by the people of the village, one form of which has already been given, 10 is very common in Melanesia, and another version 11 presents several interesting features for comparison. A woman named Garawada one day went with her mother-in-law into the jungle to gather figs. Coming to a fig-tree, Garawada climbed up and "I have sucked the shoots of dabedabe; The child then ran off to seek his way out of the jungle. Once he forgot his song, but after hastening back to relearn it, he hurried away again and came to the edge of the forest, where he saw some children throwing darts at a coco-nut which was rolled upon the ground. He yearned to play with them, and making for himself a dart, he ran toward them, singing his charm and casting his missile. Not being used to aim at a mark, however, he missed the coco-nut and struck one of the children in the arm, whereat, thinking an enemy had attacked them, the children all ran shrieking to their homes. The next day he came again, and this time the children fled at once, but though he followed, he was unable to catch them, and so returned a second time to his mother. The children now reported their adventure to their parents, and the father of one of them determined to go with them the following day and hide that he might watch what happened. Accordingly, when the little jungle-boy came the third time, the man ran At this the man said, "Truly thou art my nephew. Come, let us go and set thy mother free." So they went with many of the villagers and cut down the tree, for they could not separate the branches; but as the tree fell, Garawada slipped away and ran swiftly to the beach, and there, turning into a crab, crawled into a hole in the sand. Her son wept, because he knew that his mother had left him, but his uncle led him back to the village and took him into his own home, and the children no longer were afraid to have him for a playfellow. 12 The theme of the swan-maiden, which perhaps occurs in parts of Polynesia 13 and widely in Indonesia, 14 seems quite well developed in the New Hebrides. According to the version told in Lepers Island, 15 a party of heavenly, winged maidens once flew down to earth to bathe, 16 and Tagaro watched them. "He saw them take off their wings, stole one pair, and hid them at the foot of the main pillar of his house. He then returned and found all fled but the wingless one, and he took her to his house and presented her to his mother as his wife. After a time Tagaro took her to weed his garden, when the yams were not yet ripe, and as she weeded and touched the yam vines, ripe tubers came into her hand. Tagaro's brothers thought she was digging yams before their time and scolded her; she went into the house and sat weeping at the foot of the pillar, and as she wept her tears fell, and wearing away the earth pattered down upon her wings. She heard the sound, took up her wings, and flew back to heaven. 17 Another version 18 adds that the returning sky-maiden took her child with her; and when Tagaro came back to find his wife and son absent, he asked his mother regarding them, her PLATE XV Mask of carved wood, ornamented with figures of a bird, etc. These masks are worn in religious ceremonials, and the animals, birds, and fish represent mythical creatures appearing in clan or family myth. New Ireland, Melanesia. Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Of tales in which inanimate objects become persons or act as such, and which are apparently characteristic of the Melanesian area, we may take an example from German New Guinea. 23 One night, while two women were sleeping in a house, a tapa-beater transformed itself into a woman resembling one of the pair, and waking the other, said to her, "Come, it is time for us to go fishing." So the woman arose, and they took torches and went out to sea in a canoe. After a while she saw an island of drift-wood, and as the dawn came on, perceived that her companion had turned into a tapa-beater, 24 whereupon she said: "Oh, the tapa-beater has deceived me. While we were talking in the evening, it was standing in the corner and heard us, and in the night it came and deceived me." Landing her on the island, the tapa-beater paddled away and abandoned her; but she sought for food, and found a sea-eagle's egg which she held in her hand until it broke and hatched out a young bird, for which she cared until it grew large. Then the bird would fly off and get fish for her to eat, and also brought her a fire-brand, so that she could cook her food. Her great desire, however, was to return to her home; but when the bird said that he would carry her to the shore, she doubted whether he was strong enough. Then the bird seized a great log of wood and showed her that he could lift that, so she finally trusted FIG. 2. NATIVE DRAWING OF A "DOGAI," OR FEMALE BOGEY, NAMED METAKORAB The small striped object in the upper right-hand corner represents a man, Bu, who shot and killed her. The "Dogai" is now a group of stars of which Altair is one; Bu is now the star-group known as the Dolphin. Torres Straits. Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. 12, Fig. 4. her; and her father was angry, and building a great fire, he threw the tapa-beater into it and burned it up. 25 Equally typical of Melanesia are the many tales of ghosts; and an example from the Kai, a Papuan tribe of German New Guinea, runs as follows. 26 One day a number of brothers who were gathering material for making arm-bands had climbed into a great tree, when the youngest made a mis-step, and falling to the ground, was killed. The other brothers, who could By and by the ghost came, carrying his body on his back. He tried to throw his corpse into the first house, but it struck against the closed door and fell down again; so he picked it up and cast it at the next with like result. Thus he tried them all until he came to the last house, in which the old woman lived; and here, because the door was open, the ghost succeeded and threw his body into the house. Quickly the old woman seized the bundle and tossed it out again, but the ghost caught it and hurled it back. Thus they continued to send the body to and fro; but at last the old woman seized her grandson by mistake and threw him out, at which the ghost cried, "That is great! Now you have given me something to eat." The old woman then said, "Throw him back again," but the ghost replied, thinking to cheat her, "Do you first throw out my body. Then I will throw him back." So they argued until dawn was near, when the old woman shouted, In many parts of Melanesia a type of tale is found which seems to be rare in Polynesia and Indonesia, but is, on the other hand, common in Australia, i. e. the stories told to account for peculiar markings or characteristics of different animals, plants, or inanimate things. In the Banks Islands it is said 28 that a rat and a rail, once finding a gariga-tree full of ripe fruit, disputed which should climb the tree. At last the rat went up, but instead of throwing ripe fruit down to the rail, he ate them himself and tossed down only stones. Finding that the rat refused to give him any fully ripe fruit, the bird said, "Throw me down that one. It is only red ripe," whereupon the rat took the fruit and tossed it at the rail, so that it hit him on his forehead and stuck fast. The rail was angry, and as the rat came down from the tree, he thrust the unfolded leaf of a dracaena into the rat's rump, where it stuck fast. So the tail of the rat is the leaf of the dracaena that the rail put there, and the red lump on the head of the rail is the gariga-fruit which the rat threw at him. In Lepers Island in the New Hebrides the origin of good and bad yams is given as follows. 29 One day a hen and her ten chickens came across a wild yam, which got up after a while and ate one of the chickens. The survivors called to a kite, which said to the hen, "Put the chickens under me," and when the yam came and asked the kite where the chickens were, the bird replied, "I don't know." Thereupon the yam scolded the kite, and the latter, seizing the yam, flew high into the air and dropped it to the ground. Then another kite took it up and let it fall, so that the yam was broken into From New Britain comes the following tale 31 of the dog and the kangaroo. One day when the kangaroo was going along, followed by the dog, he ate a yellow lapua-fruit and was asked by the dog, when the latter came up with him, "Tell me, what have you eaten that your mouth is so yellow?" The kangaroo replied, "There is some of it on yonder log," pointing to a pile of filth; whereupon the dog, thinking that it was good, ran quickly and ate it up, only to hear his companion laugh and say, "Listen, friend, what I ate was a yellow lapua-fruit like that; what you have eaten is simply filth." Angered at the trick played upon him, the dog resolved to have his revenge, and so, as they went on toward the shore, he ran ahead and buried his forepaws in the sand. When the kangaroo came up, the dog said: "Gracious, but you have long forepaws! Break off a piece of your long paws. I have broken off a piece of mine as you see, and now mine are beautiful and short. Do you do likewise, and then we shall both be alike." So the kangaroo broke off a piece of each of his forepaws and threw the pieces away, whereupon the dog jumped up and said, triumphantly, "Aha! I still have long forepaws, but you have only short ones. You are the one who deceived me and made 32 In several cases the parallelism between the Melanesian and Australian tales of this type is very striking; its significance will be apparent later.MISCELLANEOUS TALES
My mother is Garawada."
