III

I shall give this narrative in a consecutive manner, as it was told to me by some of the most experienced and renowned Trobriand sailors in Sinaketa, Oburaku, and Omarakana. We can imagine that exactly such a narrative would be told by a veteran toliwaga to his usagelu on the beach of Yakum, as our Kula party sit round the camp fires at night. One of the old men, well-known for the excellence of his kayga’u, and boastful of it, would tell his story, entering minutely into all the details, however often the others might have heard about them before, or even assisted at the performance of his magic. He would then proceed to describe, with extreme realism, and dwelling graphically on every point, the story of a shipwreck, very much as if he had gone through one himself. As a matter of fact, no one alive at present has had any personal experience of such a catastrophe, though many have lived through frequent narrow escapes in stormy weather. Based on this, and on what they have heard themselves of the tradition of shipwrecks, natives will tell the story with characteristic vividness. Thus, the account given below is not only a summary of native belief, it is an ethnographic document in itself, representing the manner in which such type of narrative would be told over camp fires, the same subject being over and over again repeated by the same man, and listened to by the same audience, exactly as we, when children, or the peasants of Eastern Europe, will hearken to familiar fairy tales and Märchen. The only deviation here from what would actually take place in such a story-telling, is the insertion of magical formulæ into the narrative. The speaker might indeed repeat his magic, were he speaking in broad daylight, in his village, to a group of close kinsmen and friends. But being on a small island in the middle of the ocean, and at night, the recital of spells would be a taboo of the kayga’u; nor would a man ever recite his magic before a numerous audience, except on certain occasions at mortuary vigils, where people are expected to chant their magic aloud before hundreds of listeners.

Returning then again to our group of sailors, who sit under the stunted pandanus trees of Yakum, let us listen to one of the companions of the daring Maradiana, now dead, to one of the descendants of the great Maniyuwa. He will tell us how, early in the morning, on the day of departure from Sinaketa, or sometimes on the next morning, when they leave Muwa, he performs the first rite of kayga’u. Wrapping up a piece of leyya (wild ginger root) in a bit of dried banana leaf, he chants over it the long spell of the giyorokaywa, the kayga’u of the Above. He chants this spell into the leaf, holding it cup-shaped, with the morsel of ginger root at the bottom, so that the spell might enter into the substance to be medicated. After that, the leaf is immediately wrapped round, so as to imprison the magical virtue, and the magician ties the parcel round his left arm, with a piece of bast or string. Sometimes he will medicate two bits of ginger and make two parcels, of which the other will be placed in a string necklet, and carried on his breast. Our narrator, who is the master of one of the canoes, will probably not be the only one within the circle round the camp fire, who carries these bundles of medicated ginger; for though a toliwaga must always perform this rite as well as know all the other magic of shipwreck, as a rule several of the older members of his crew also know it, and have also prepared their magical bundles.

This is one of the spells of the giyorokaywa, such as the old man said over the ginger root: