The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage and Family Life Among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea
Bronislaw Malinowski · 1929 · Harvest Book reprint (Harcourt, Brace & World, New York) of the 1929 copyright text, with preface by Havelock Ellis (Archive.org sexuallifeofsava0000mali, pdftotext extraction) · Public Domain · uncorrected OCR — being verified against the scan
Trobriand fieldwork 1915-18; published 1929 with a preface by Havelock Ellis. Text from a later Harvest Book reprint (Harcourt, Brace & World, post-1962) of the 1929 copyright text.
Served verbatim, era-bound vocabulary and all — the house frames, it never
paraphrases; what a passage does and does not show rides its receipt.
The
ideas of the native concerning kinship and descent,
with their assertion of the mother’s exclusive part in
propagation j the position of woman within the household,
and her considerable share in economic life: these imply
that woman plays an influential role in the community,
and that her status cannot be low or unimportant.
In this
section it will be necessary to consider her legal status
and her position in the tribe; that is, her rank, her power,
and her social independence of man.
In the first section of the previous chapter we have dis¬
cussed the kinship ideas of the natives, founded on the
matrilineal principle that everything descends through the
mother.
We have also seen that the real guardianship
of her family remains not with herself, but with her
brother.
This can be generalized into the formula that,
in each generation, woman continues the line and man rep¬
resents it; or, in other words, that the power and func¬
tions which belong to a family are vested in the men of
each generation, though they have to be transmitted by
the women.
I
THE
Let us examine some of the consequences of this prin¬
ciple.
For the continuation and very existence of the
family, woman as well as man is indispensable; there¬
fore both sexes are regarded by the natives as being of
equal value and importance.
When you discuss genealo¬
gies with a native, the question of continuity of line is
-constantly considered in relation to the number of women
alive.
This was noticeable whenever a man of a sub-clan
of high rank, such as the Tabalu of Omarakana, discussed
the ethnographic census of its members with me: the fact
that there was a great number of women would be em¬
phasized with pleasure, and said to be good and impor¬
tant.
That there were only two women of that sub-clan
of high rank in Omarakana, while there were several male
members, was obviously a sore point, and every Tabalu
informant volunteered the statement that there were, how¬
ever, more women in the younger line of Olivilevi, a
village in the south of the island also ruled by the Tabalu.
A man of any clan would often, in speaking of his family
relations, expatiate on the number of his sisters and of
their female children as being a matter of real importance
to his lineage.
Thus girls are quite as welcome at birth as
boys, and no difference is made between them by the
parents in interest, enthusiasm, or affection.
It is needless
to add that the idea of female infanticide would be as
absurd as abhorrent to the natives.
The general rule that women hand on the privileges
of the family and men exercise them, must be examined
as it works.
When that is done we shall be able to under¬
stand the principle better and even to qualify it somewhat.
The idea of rank—that is, of an intrinsic, social superiority
of certain people as their birthright—is very highly devel29
oped among the Trobriand Islanders j and a consideration
of the way in which rank affects the individual will best
explain the working of the general principle.
Rank is associated with definite hereditary groups of
a totemic nature, which have already been designated here
as sub-clans (see also ch. xiii, sec. 5).
Each sub-clan has
a definite rank} it claims to be higher than some, and
admits its inferiority to others.
Five or six main cate¬
gories of rank can, broadly speaking, be distinguished, and
within these the minor grades are of but small impor¬
tance.
For the sake of brevity and clarity, I shall chiefly
concern myself with a comparison of the sub-clan of
Tabalu, the highest of all in rank, with its inferiors.
Every village community “belongs to” or is “owned
by” one such sub-clan, and the eldest male is the headman
of the village.
When the sub-clan is of highest rank, its
oldest male not only is headman of his own village, but
exercises over-rule in a whole district, and is what we
have called a chief.
Chieftainship and rank are, there¬
fore, closely associated, and rank carries with it, not only
social distinction, but also the right to rule.
Now, one of
these two attributes, but one only, social distinction, is
shared by men and women alike.
Every woman of the
highest rank, that of Tabalu, enjoys all the personal
privileges of nobility.
The male members of the clan
will perhaps say that man is more aristocratic, more
guya'u than woman, but probably this merely expresses
the general assumption of male superiority.
In all con¬
crete manifestations of rank, whether traditional or social,
the two sexes are equal.
In the extensive mythology re30
ferring to the origin of the various sub-clans, a woman
ancestress always figures beside the man (her brother),
and there are even myths in which a woman alone inau¬
gurates a line.1
Another important manifestation of rank is the complex
system of taboos, and this is equally binding on man and
woman. The taboos of rank include numerous prohibi¬
tions in the matter of food, certain animals especially being
forbidden, and there are some other notable restrictions,
such as that prohibiting the use of any water except from
water-holes in the coral ridge. These taboos are enforced
by supernatural sanction, and illness follows their breach,
even if it be accidental. But the real force by which they
are maintained is a strong conviction on the part of the
taboo keeper that the forbidden food is intrinsically in¬
ferior, that it is disgusting and defiling in itself. When it
is suggested to a Tabalu that he should eat of stingaree
or bush pig he shows unmistakable signs of repulsion; and
cases are quoted in which a man of rank has vomited, with
every sign of nausea, some forbidden substance which he
had taken unwittingly. A citizen of Omarakana will
speak of the stingaree eaters of the lagoon villages with
the same disgusted contempt as the right-minded Briton
uses towards the frog- and snail-eaters of France, or the
European towards the puppy- and rotten-egg-eaters of
China.
Now a woman of rank fully shares in this disgust, and
in the danger from breaking a taboo. If, as does occa¬
sionally happen, she marries a man of lower rank, she
1 Cf. my Myth in Primitive Psychology, ch. ii
must have all food, all cooking utensils, dishes, and drink¬
ing vessels separate from her husband, or else he must
forgo all such diet as is taboo to her; the latter is the
course more usually adopted.
Rank entitles its possessors to certain ornaments, which
serve both as its insignia and as festive decorations.
For
instance, a certain kind of shell ornament, the red spondylus shell-discs, may only be worn on the forehead and on
the occiput by people of the highest rank.
As belts and
armlets they are also permitted to those next in rank.
Again, an armlet on the forearm is a mark of the first
aristocracy.
Varieties and distinctions in personal adorn¬
ment are very numerous, but it will be enough to say here
that they are observed in exactly the same manner by male
and female, though the ornaments are more frequently
made use of by the latter.
Certain house decorations, on the other hand, such as
carved boards and ornaments of shell (pis. 2, 20, and 23),
which are in pattern and material exclusive to the several
higher ranks, are primarily made use of by the male
representatives.
But a woman of rank who marries a
commoner would be fully entitled to have them on her
house.
The very important and elaborate ceremonial of respect
observed towards people of rank is based on the idea that
a man of noble lineage must always remain on a physically
higher level than his inferiors.
In the presence of a noble,
all people of lower rank have to bow the head or bend
the body or squat on the ground, according to the degree
of their inferiority.
On no account must any head reach
higher than that of the chief.
Tall platforms are always
built on to the chief’s house, and on one of these he will
sit so that the people may freely move below him during
tribal gatherings (see pi. 2, where we see the chief lean¬
ing against such a platform).
When a commoner passes
a group of nobles seated on the ground, even at a dis¬
tance, he has to call out tokay (“arise”), and the chiefs
immediately scramble to their feet and remain standing
while he crouches past them.1 One would think that so
uncomfortable a ceremonial of homage would have been
circumvented in some way; but this is not the case.
Many
times when I was sitting in the village in conversation with
the chief, a commoner would pass through the village
grove, and call out tokay, and though this would happen
every quarter of an hour or so, my friend had to rise while
the other, bending low, walked slowly by.2
Women of rank enjoy exactly the same privilege in
this matter.
When a noblewoman is married to a com¬
moner, her husband has to bend before her in public, and
others have to be still more careful to do so.
A high
platform is erected for her and she sits upon it alone at
tribal assemblies, while her husband moves or squats be¬
low with the rest of the crowd.
1 Tokay, as noun, also means “commoner.”
The noun Is perhaps de¬
rived etymologically from the verb.
2 When To’uluwa, the paramount chief of the Trobriands, was put in
jail by the resident magistrate, the latter, mostly, I am afraid, because he
wanted to humiliate his native rival, forbade the commoners incarcerated
with the chief to crouch before him.
In spite of this, I have been told
on good authority by several eye-witnesses that all the commoners in jail
did constantly move bending, except when the white satrap appeared upon
the scene. This is an example of the short-sighted policy of the typical
white official, who thinks that his authority can only be maintained at the
expense of the native chiefs, and thus undermines native tribal law and
introduces a spirit of anarchy.
The sanctity of the chief’s person is particularly local¬
ized in his head, which is surrounded by a halo of strict
taboos.
More especially sacred are the forehead and the
occiput with the neck.
Only equals in rank, the wives and
a few particularly privileged persons, are allowed to touch
these parts, for purposes of cleaning, shaving, ornamenta¬
tion, and delousing.
This sanctity of the head extends to
the female members of the noble sub-clans, and if a
noblewoman marries a commoner, her brow, her occiput,
her neck and shoulders, should not—in theory at least—
be touched by the husband even during the most intimate
phases of conjugal life.
Thus in myth, in the observation of taboo, and in the
ceremonial of bending, the woman enjoys exactly the same
privileges of rank as the man; but she never exercises
the actual power associated with it.
No woman is ever the
head of any sub-clan, and thus she cannot be a chieftainess.
What would happen should there be no male members in
a given generation I cannot say, for there are no actual
cases of this on record; but the interim regency of a woman
seems by no means incompatible with the ideas of the
Trobrianders.
But, as we shall see later on (ch. v, sec. 4),
the privilege of polygamy is the foundation of a chief’s or
headman’s power, and women, of course, have no such
similar privilege of polyandry.
Many other social functions of rank are directly exer¬
cised by men alone, the women participating only in the
social prestige.
Thus ownership of canoes, for instance,
is vested in the headman—though all the villagers enjoy
definite rights in them—but his kinswomen only have
the benefit of the renown (butura), that is, the privilege
of talking in proprietary terms of the canoes and of boast¬
ing about them.1
Only in exceptional cases do they accom¬
pany their men-folk on oversea expeditions.
Again, all
sorts of rights, privileges, and activities connected with
the kulay a special system of exchange in valuables, are
the prerogatives of men.
The woman, whether the man’s
wife or sister, is only occasionally drawn personally into
the matter.
For the most part she but basks in reflected
glory and satisfaction.
In war, men have the field of
action entirely to themselves, though the women witness
all the preparations and preliminary ceremonies, and even
take an occasional peep at the battlefield itself.2
It is important to note that in this section, when com¬
paring the parts played by the sexes, we have had quite as
often to set the brother and sister side by side as the hus¬
band and wife.
Within the matrilineal order, the brother
and the sister are the naturally linked representatives of
the male and female principle respectively in all legal
and customary matters.
In the myths concerning the
origin of families, the brother and sister emerge together
from underground, through the original hole in the earth.
In family matters, the brother is the natural guardian and
head of his sister’s household, and of her children.
In
tribal usage, their respective duties and obligations are
strictly regulated, and these form, as we shall see, one of
1 These questions have been discussed in detail in Argonauts of the
Western Pacific, ch. iv, secs, iv and v, and ch. xi, sec. n. Cf. also ch. vi
of that book, and Crime and Custom.
2 For a full description of the kula, see Argonauts; fighting has been
described in the article on “War and Weapons Among the Natives of the
Trobriand Islands,” Man, 1920.
the main strands in the social fabric.
But in their personal
relations the strictest taboo divides brother from sister—
and prevents any sort of intimacy between them.1
As woman is debarred from the exercise of power, land
ownership, and many other public privileges, it follows
that she has no place at tribal gatherings and no voice
in such public deliberations as are held in connection with
gardening, fishing, hunting, oversea expeditions, war, cere¬
monial trade, festivities and dances.
On the other hand, there are certain ceremonial and
festive activities in connection with which women have
a great deal both to say and to do.
The most important
of these in solemnity and sanctity, as well as the most
imposing in display and extent, are the mortuary cere¬
monies.
In the tending of the corpse, the parade of grief,
the burial with its manifold rites and long series of cere¬
monial food distributions: in all these activities, which
begin immediately after the death of any important tribes¬
man and continue at intervals for months or even years
afterwards, women play a large part and have their own
definite duties to fulfil.
Certain women, standing in a
special relationship to the deceased, have to hold the corpse
on their knees, and fondle it 3 and while the corpse is
tended in the hut, another category of female relatives
performs a remarkable rite of mourning outside: a number
1 Cf. ch. xiii, sec. 6, and ch. xiv.
of them, some in couples facing each other and some
singly, move in a slow dance, forwards and backwards
across the central place, to the rhythm of the wailing dirge
(see pi. 11).
Asa rule, each of them carries in her hand
some object worn or possessed by the deceased.
Such
relics play a great part in mourning and are worn by the
women for a long time after their bereavement.
The
wrapping up of the corpse and the subsequent vigil over
the grave is the duty of yet another category of the dead
man’s womenkind.
Some functions of burial, notably the gruesome custom
of cutting up the corpse, are performed by men.
In the
long period of mourning which follows, the burden of the
dramatic expression of grief falls mostly on the women ;
a widow always mourns longer than a widower, a mother
longer than a father, a female relative longer than a male
of the same degree.
In the mortuary distributions of food
and wealth, based on the idea that the members of the
deceased’s sub-clan give payment to the other relatives for
their share in the mourning, women play a conspicuous
role, and conduct some parts of the ceremonial distribu¬
tions themselves (see pi. 12).
I have barely touched on the mortuary ceremonies, as
we shall have to return to them presently (ch. vi, secs.
3 and 4), but I have said enough to show how large a
share women take in this class of religious or ceremonial
display.
Some tribal ceremonies in which women alone
are active will be described in detail later, and it is only
necessary here to state briefly that in the long and com¬
plicated ceremonial of first pregnancy (ch. viii, secs. 1 and
2) and in the rites of beauty magic at festivities (ch. xi,
secs. 2-4) women are the main actors.
On certain occa¬
sions, such as first pregnancy ritual and the first appear¬
ance after childbirth, as well as at big tribal dances and
kayasa (competitive displays), women appear in full dress
and decoration (pi. 13), which correspond to the men’s
full festive attire (as seen on pis. 14 and 79).
An interesting incident occurs during the milamala, the
annual season of dancing and feasting held after the
harvest.
This period is inaugurated by a ceremony, the
principal aim of which is to break the taboo on drums.
In this initial feast there is a distribution of food, and the
men, adorned in full dancing attire, range themselves for
the performance, the drummers and the singers in the
centre of a ring formed by the decorated dancers.
As in
a normal dance, standing in the central place, the singers
intone a chant, the dancers begin to move slowly and the
drummers to beat time.
But they are not allowed to
proceed: almost at the first throb of the drums, there
breaks forth from inside the huts the wailing of those
women who are still in mourning} from behind the inner
row of houses, a crowd of shrieking, agitated female
figures rush out and attack the dancers, beat them with
sticks, and throw coconuts, stones, and pieces of wood at
them.
The men are not bound by custom to display too
considerable courage and in a trice the drummers, who
had so solemnly initiated the performance, have entirely
disappeared} and the village lies empty, for the women
pursue the fugitives.
But the taboo is broken and, on the
pare plate 33.
Com¬
[Ch. II, 2; also ch. VI, 3]
Held at Oburaku after the death of Ineykoya.
Distribution of Skirts in Mortuary Ritual
afternoon of the same day, the first undisturbed dance of
the festivities is held.
In full dress dancing (see pis. 14, 58, 65, 73, 82), it
is mainly the men who display their beauty and skill.
In
some dances, such as those performed in a quick tempo
with carved dancing boards or with bunches of streamers
or in conventionalized imitation of animals, men alone
may participate (pis. 65, 73, 82).
Only in one tradi¬
tional type of dance, for which men put on the fibre pet¬
ticoats of the female (see pis. 3, 58), are women not
debarred by custom from participation.
But though I
witnessed scores of performances of this type, I only once
saw a womanly actually dance, and she was of the very
highest rank.
As passive witnesses and admirers, how¬
ever, women form a very important adjunct to this form
of display.
There are many other long, continuous periods of
amusement in the Trobriands besides the dancing season,
and in these women take a more active share.
The nature
of the amusement is fixed in advance, and has to remain
the same during the whole period.
There are different
kinds of kayasa, as these entertainments are called (see
ch. ix, secs. 2-4).
There is a kayasa in which, evening
after evening, groups of women, festively adorned, sit on
mats and singj in another, men and women, wearing
wreaths and garlands of flowers, exchange such ornaments
with each other 5 or a kayasa is announced, the main theme
of which is a general daily display of a certain type of
ornament.
Sometimes the members of a community pre¬
pare small toy sailing canoes and hold a miniature regatta
daily on shallow water.
erotic pastimes.
There can be also a kayasa of
Some of these entertainments are exclu¬
sively feminine (singing and certain ornaments); in others
both sexes participate (flowers, erotics, and hair decora¬
tion) ; in others only men (the toy canoes).
In all the public festivals and entertainments, whether
women take an active part or no, they are never excluded
from looking on or freely mixing with the menj and this
they do on terms of perfect equality, exchanging banter
and jokes with them and engaging in easy conversation.
woman’s share
in
magic
One aspect of public life is very important to the
Trobriander and stands apart as something peculiar and
specific.
The native sets on one side a certain category
of facts, one type of human behaviour, and designates
these by the word megwa} which may be quite adequately
translated as “magic.” \_Magic is very intimately associated
with economic life and indeed with every vital concern; it
is also an instrument of power and an index of the im¬
portance of those who practise it.
The position of women
in magic deserves therefore very special consideration?)
Magic constitutes a particular aspect of reality.
In all
important activities and enterprises in which man has not
the issue firmly and safely in hand, magic is deemed
indispensable.
Thus appeal is made to it in gardening
and fishing, in building a large canoe, and in diving for
valuable shell, in the regulation of wind and weather, in
war, in matters of love and personal attraction, in secur¬
ing safety at sea and the success of any great enterprise}
and, last but not least, in health and for the infliction of
ailments upon an enemy.
Success and safety in all these
matters is largely and sometimes entirely dependent upon
magic, and can be controlled by its proper application.
Fortune or failure, dearth or plenty, health or disease are
felt and believed to be mainly due to the right magic
rightly applied in the right circumstances.
Magic consists of spells and rites performed by a man
who is entitled by the fulfilment of several conditions to
perform them.
Magical power resides primarily in the
words of the formula, and the function of the rite, which
is as a rule very simple, is mainly to convey the magician’s
breath, charged with the power of the words, to the
object or person to be affected.
All magical spells are
believed to have descended unchanged from time imme¬
morial, from the beginning of things.
This last point has its sociological corollary; several
systems of magic are hereditary, each in a special sub¬
clan, and such a system has been possessed by that sub-clan
since the time it came out from underground.
It can only
be performed by a member, and is, of course, one of the
valued attributes and possessions of the sub-clan itself.
It is handed on in the female line, though usually, as with
other forms of power and possession, it is exercised by
men alone.
But in a few cases such hereditary magic can
also be practised by women.
The power given by magic to its performer is not due
merely to the effects of its specific influence.
4i
In the most
important types of magic the rites are intimately inter¬
woven with the activities which they accompany and are
not merely superimposed upon them.
Thus, in garden
magic, the officiator plays an economically and socially
important role and is the organizer and director of the
work.
It is the same in the building of a canoe and its
magic, and in the rites associated with the conduct of an
oversea expedition: the man who technically directs and is
the leader of the enterprise has also the duty or privilege
of performing the magic.1
Both functions, the directive
and the magical, are indivisibly united in the same person.
In other types of magic, which are placed by the natives
in the category of bulubwalata (black magic)—and this
comprises all sorcery and, among others, the charms for
drought or rain—the practitioner has an immense and
direct influence over other tribesmen.
Magic is indeed
by far the most efficient and frequently used instrument
of power.
As magic is so intimately bound up with the activity
which it accompanies, it is clear that, in certain types of
occupation, the division of functions between the sexes
will involve a corresponding division in magical per¬
formance.
Those types of work which customarily only
men perform will demand a man as officiating magician;
where women are occupied with their own business, the
magician must be female.
Thus, looking at the table
given below, we see that in fishing and hunting, as well
as in wood carving, activities in which no woman ever
participates, magic is exclusively practised by men.
War
1 Cf. Argonauts of the Western Pacific, esp. chs. iv, v, vii, and xvii.
magic, too, which is now in abeyance, was an hereditary
system of spells and rites always practised by a man of a
certain sub-clan.
The long and complex series of spells
which accompany the building of a sea-going canoe can
never be made by a v/oman, and, as no woman ever goes
on a ceremonial overseas expedition, the magic of safety
and of kula which then has to be performed can only be
done by a man.
Division of Magic Between the Sexes
Male
Female
Mixed
Public garden magic
(To’wosi)
Fishing
Hunting
Canoe building
Magic of kula
(M’wasila)
Weather (sun and
rain)
Wind
War magic (Boma)
Safety at sea
(Kayga’u)
Wood carving (Kabi-
Rites of first preg¬
nancy
Skirt making
Prevention of dangers
at birth
Toothache
Elephantiasis, swell¬
ings
Affections of the geni¬
tals with discharge
(Gonorrhoea ?)
Abortion
Female witchcraft
(Yoyova or Muluk-
Beauty magic
Love magic
Private garden magic
tam)
<wausi)
Sorcery (Bwaga’u)
Again there are some important types of magic which
are obviously adapted to female hands and lips, for they
are attached to activities or functions which by their nature
or by social convention exclude the presence of men.
Such
is the magic associated with the ceremony of first preg¬
nancy (see ch. viii, secs, i and 2)} the magic of the expert
which gives skill in the manufacture of fibre petticoats}
and the magic of abortion.
There are, however, mixed spheres of activity and in43
fluence, such as gardening or love-making, the control of
the weather or human health, where at first glance there
appears to be no association with one sex rather than the
other.
Yet garden magic is invariably a man’s concern
and women never perform the important public rites,
most scrupulously observed and highly valued by the
natives, which are carried out by the village magician over
the gardens of the whole community.1 Even those phases
of gardening, such as weeding, which are undertaken ex¬
clusively by women, have to be inaugurated by the male
garden magician in an official ceremony.
Wind, sunshine,
and rain are also controlled entirely by male hands and
mouths.
In certain mixed activities a man or a woman can equally
well perform the required magic, and some minor rites
of private garden magic, used by each individual for his
or her own benefit, can be carried out indiscriminately by
men or women.
There is the magic of love and beauty,
of which the spells are recited by anyone who suffers from
unrequited love or needs to enhance his or her personal
charm.
Again, on certain occasions, such, for instance,
as the big tribal festivals, the spells of beauty are publicly
recited by women over men (ch. xi, sec. 3), and, at other
times, men apply a form of beauty magic to their own
persons and ornaments.2
The most definite allocation of magical powers to one
1.In the Amphlett Islands, on the other hand, garden magic is made
mainly if not exclusively by women. Among the natives of Dobu Island
and on the north-eastern shores of Dawson Straits in the d’Entrecasteaux
Archipelago, women also play a preponderating role in garden magic.
Cf. Argonauts of the Western Pacific, ch. xiii, sec. i.
or other of the sexes is to be found in the dark and
dreaded forces of sorcery: those forces which most pro¬
foundly affect human hope and happiness.
The magic
of illness and health, which can poison life or restore its
natural sweetness, and which holds death as it were for
its last card, can be made by men and women alike 3 but
its character changes entirely with the sex of the prac¬
titioner.
Man and woman have each their own sorcery,
carried on by means of different rites and formulae, acting
in a different manner on the victim’s body and surrounded
by an altogether different atmosphere of belief.
Male
sorcery is much more concrete, and its methods can be
stated clearly, almost as a rational system.
The sorcerer’s
supernatural equipment is restricted to his power of van¬
ishing at will, of emitting a shining glow from his person,
and of having accomplices among the nocturnal birds.
Extremely poor means of supernatural action if we com¬
pare them with the achievements of a witch!
A witch—and be it remembered that she is always a real
woman and not a spiritual or non-human being
goes out
on her nightly errand in the form of an invisible double;
she can fly through the air and appears as a falling star;
she assumes at will the shape of a fire-fly, of a night bird
or of a flying-fox; she can hear and smell at enormous
distances; she is endowed with sarcophagous propensities,
and feeds on corpses.
The disease which witches cause is almost incurable and
extremely rapid in its action, killing, as a rule, immedi¬
ately.
It is inflicted by the removal of the victim’s inside,
which the woman presently consumes.
The wizard, on
the other hand, never partakes of his victim’s flesh, his
power is much less effective, he must proceed slowly, and
the best he can hope for is to inflict a lingering disease,
which may, with good luck, kill after months or years of
steady labour.
Even then another sorcerer can be hired
to counteract his work and restore the patient.
But there
is little chance of combating a witch, even if the help of
another witch be sought immediately.
A witch, when she is not old, is no less desirable sex¬
ually than other women.
Indeed, she is surrounded by
a halo of glory due to her personal power, and usually
she has also that strong individuality which seems to ac¬
company the reputation for witchcraft.
The attraction
which a marriageable young witch has for the other sex
need not be altogether disinterested, for witchcraft is
occasionally a source of income and of personal influence
in which it is pleasant to have a share.
But the profes¬
sion of witch, unlike that of sorcerer, is not exercised
openlyj a witch may receive payment for healing, but
she never undertakes to kill for a fee.
In this again she
differs from the sorcerer who derives the greater part of
his income from black rather than from curative practice.
Indeed, even when a woman is generally known to be a
witch, she is never supposed to admit it explicitly, even
to her husband.
Witchcraft is inherited from mother to daughter, and
an early initiation has to take place.
In later life, the
art of female necromancy is sometimes further enhanced
by less reputable means.
Some women are said to have
sexual relations with non-human, highly malignant beings
Decorated Women
[Ch. II, 2]
Men in Full Festive Attire
called tauva’u who bring epidemics and various evils
upon the people (see ch. xii, sec. 4).
By them they are
further instructed in the art of harming, and such women
are greatly feared.
Several of my personal acquaintance
were definitely pointed out as having a leman from the
sphere of tauva’u, notably the wife of the headman of
Obweria, a very intelligent and enterprising character,
who is seen, as the main performer, on plates 77 and 78.
From the point of view of the investigating sociologist,
the most important difference between male and female
sorcery lies in the fact that the wizard actually carries on
his trade, while the witch’s activity exists only in folk¬
lore and in the imagination of the native.
That is to say,
a sorcerer actually knows the magic of his trade; when
called upon he will utter it over the proper substances;
will go out at night to waylay his victim or visit him in
his hut; and in certain cases, I suspect, may even admin¬
ister poison.
The witch, on the other hand, however
much she may be believed to play the part of a yoyoya,
does not—needless to say—really fly or abstract the in¬
sides of people, and she knows no spells or rites, since
this type of female magic lives merely in legend and
fiction.
There are a number of minor ailments, among them
toothache, certain tumours, swelling of the testicles and
genital discharge (gonorrhoea?), which woman can inflict
on man by means of magic.
Toothache is exclusively a
female specialty, and one woman will be called in to
cure it when some other has caused it.
A witch can pro¬
duce it through her magical power over a small beetle
called kimy which is very similar to the one which makes
holes in taro.
The resemblance between dental caries and
the cavities bored by the beetle in taro is a sufficient proof
that similar effects have been produced by similar causes.
But some of my informants had actually seen the small
black scarab fall out of a man’s mouth while a woman was
performing the curative formula.
There are, as we have seen, forms of hereditary magic •
which can be carried on only by male members of a sub¬
clan, or, exceptionally, by the son of such a member.
(And in the latter case he has to relinquish it at his fa¬
ther’s death.)
Now, if the males of a certain generation
were to die out, a woman could learn such magic, though
she would not be allowed to practise it, and when she
bore a male heir to her sub-clan, would teach him the
formula for his future use. Thus woman can tide over
the gap of one generation, carrying in her memory a sys¬
tem of garden magic, or weather and wind charms, or
spells for fishing, hunting, canoe building, and oversea
trade.
She can even preserve a system of war magic,
but she must never learn the formula of masculine sor¬
cery, which is strictly taboo to the female sex.
Nor is
there any necessity for her to do so, since this magic is
never strictly hereditary within a sub-clan.
Thus we see that the strong tribal position of women
is also buttressed by their right to exercise magic—that
toughest and least destructible substance of belief.
And now, in order to summarize briefly the results of
this chapter and the previous one, let us imagine that we
are taking a bird’s-eye view of a native village, and are
trying to form a compound moving picture of the life of
the community.
Casting our glance over the central
place, the street, and the surrounding grove and garden
land, we see them peopled by men and women mixing
freely and on terms of equality.
Sometimes they go to¬
gether to work in the garden, or to collect food-stuffs in
the jungle or on the sea-shore.
Or else they separate,
each sex forming a group of workers engaged in some
special activity, and performing it efficiently and with
interest.
Men predominate on the central place, discuss¬
ing, perhaps, in a communal gathering the prospects of
the garden, or preparing for an oversea expedition or
for some ceremony.
The street is peopled by women,
busying themselves with household work, and there the
men will presently join them, helping them to amuse
the children or in some domestic task.
We can hear the
women scold their husbands, usually in a very goodnatured manner.
Let us suppose our attention to be drawn to some sin¬
gular event, to a death, a tribal squabble, a division of
inherited wealth, or to some ceremony.
We watch it
with understanding eyes, and see, side by side, the work¬
ings of tribal law and custom, and the play of personal
passion and interest.
We see the influence of matrilineal
principles, the working of paternal rule, usages of tribal
authority, and the results of totemic division in the clans
and sub-clans.
In all this there is a balance between the
influence of male and female, the man wields the power
while the woman determines its distribution.
Or perhaps the central place is thronged by a mixed
gathering, gay with festive dress and decorations. Women
move with a soft swaying motion in their holiday attire,
coquettishly aware of the lines of their bodies and the
elegant swish-swish of their full, crimson, purple, and
golden skirts.
The men are more soberly dressed, and
affect a stiff, immovable dignity.
They move very little,
unless they are among the performers in the dance or
other festive function.
These last are covered gorgeously
with ornaments, and are instinct with life and motion.
The performance starts; it is carried on sometimes by
men only, and sometimes by women.
As it progresses,
later in the afternoon or in the evening, the young men
and women begin to show some interest in each other:
here and there snatches of conversation, bursts of laugh¬
ter and giggling can be heard.
Nothing in the slightest
degree obscene, indecent, or sexually improper can be
observed in their behaviour, though their vocabulary is
by no means prim.
But, since we understand this com¬
munity, we know that assignations are being made and
intrigues inaugurated.
Thus we are led up to the closer
study of the erotic phase of native lifej and we now
proceed to a systematic description of this subject.
The nature of matrimonial bonds reveals
itself in their
breaking in life by divorce, as it does also in their disso¬
lution by death.
In the first instance we can observe the
strain to which they are submitted} we can see where they
are strong enough to resist and where they most easily
yield.
In the second we can estimate the strength of the
social ties and the depth of personal sorrow by their ex¬
pression in the ceremonial of mourning and burial.
I
Divorce, called by the natives vaypaka (vay = mar¬
riage} -paka, from payki, to refuse), is not infrequent.
Whenever husband and wife disagree too acutely, or
whenever bitter quarrels or fierce jealousy makes them
chafe too violently at the bond between them, this can
be dissolved—provided the emotional situation does not
lead instead to a more tragic issue (see sec. 2 of the pre¬
vious chapter).
We have seen why this solution, or
rather dissolution, of the difficulty is a weapon used by
the woman rather than the man.
A husband very seldom
repudiates his wife, though in principle he is entitled to
do so.
For adultery, he has the right to kill her; but the
usual punishment is a thrashing, or perhaps merely re¬
monstrance or a fit of the sulks.
If he has any other se¬
rious grievance against her, such as bad temper or laziness,
the husband, who is little hampered by marriage ties,
easily finds consolation outside his household, while he
still benefits by the marriage tribute from his wife’s
relatives.
There are, on the other hand, several instances on rec¬
ord of a woman leaving her husband because of ill-treat¬
ment or infidelity on his part, or else because she had
become enamoured of someone else.
Thus, to take a
case already described, when Bulubwaloga caught her
husband, Gilayviyaka, in flagrante delicto with his father’s
wife, she left him and returned to her family (see ch. v,
sec. 5).
Again, a woman married to Gomaya, the ne’er-
do-well successor to one of the petty chiefs of Sinaketa,
left him because, in his own words, she found him an
adulterer and also “very lazy.”
Bolobesa, the wife of the
previous chief of Omarakana, left him because she was
dissatisfied or jealous, or just tired of him (ch. v, sec. 2).
Dabugera, the grand-niece of the present chief, left her
first husband because she discovered his infidelities and
found him, moreover, not to her taste. Her mother,
Ibo’una, the chief’s grand-niece, took as a second husband
one Iluwaka’i, a man of Kavataria and at that time inter¬
preter to the resident magistrate.
When he lost his po¬
sition she abandoned him, not only, we may presume,
because he was less good-looking without his uniform, but
also because power attracts the fair sex in the Trobriands
as elsewhere.
These two ladies of rank display an exact¬
ing taste in husbands, and indeed the fickleness of those
privileged by birth has become proverbial in the Trobriands: “She likes the phallus as a woman of guy a’ u
(chief) rank does.”
But among people of lower rank, also, there are many
instances of a woman leaving her husband simply be¬
cause she does not like him.
During my first visit to the
Trobriands, Sayabiya, a fine-looking girl, bubbling over
with health, vitality, and temperament, was quite happily
married to Tomeda, who was a handsome, good-natured
and honest, but stupid man.
When I returned, she had
gone back to live in her village as an unmarried girl,
simply because she was tired of her husband.
A very
good-looking girl of Oburaku, Bo’usari, had left two
husbands, one after the other, and, to judge from her
intrigues, was looking for a third.
Neither from her,
nor from the intimate gossip of the village, could I get
any good reason for her two desertions, and it was ob¬
vious that she simply wanted to be free again.
Sometimes extraneous conditions, more especially quar¬
rels between the husband and the wife’s family, lead to
divorce.
Thus as one result of the quarrel between
Namwana Guya’u and Mitakata, Orayayse, Mitakata’s
wife, had to leave her husband because she belonged to
his enemy’s family.
In a dispute between two communi¬
ties, marriages are often dissolved for the same reason.
An interesting case of matrimonial misfortune which
led to divorce is that of Bagido’u, the heir apparent of
Omarakana (pi. 64).
His first wife and her son died,
and he then married Dakiya, an extremely attractive
woman who bore traces of her good looks even at the
somewhat mature age at which I first saw her.
Dakiya’s
younger sister Kamwalila was married to Manimuwa, a
renowned sorcerer of Wakayse.
Kamwalila sickened, and
her sister Dakiya went to nurse her.
Then between her
and her sister’s husband evil things began.
love magic over her.
He made
Her mind was influenced, and they
committed adultery then and there.
When, after her
sister’s death, Dakiya returned to her husband Bagido’u,
matters were not as before.
He found his food tough,
his water brackish, the coconut drinks bitter, and the betel
nut without a bite in it.
He would also discover small
stones and bits of wood in his lime pot, twigs lying about
in the road where he used to pass, pieces of foreign mat¬
ter in his food.
He sickened and grew worse and worse,
for all these substances were, of course, vehicles of evil
magic, performed by his enemy, the sorcerer Manimuwa,
assisted in this by the faithless wife.
In the meantime,
his wife trysted with her leman.
Bagido’u scolded and threatened her until one day she
ran away and went to live with Manimuwa, an altogether
irregular procedure.
The power of the chiefs being now
only a shadow, Bagido’u could not use special force to
bring her back; so he took another wife
a broad-faced,
sluggish, and somewhat cantankerous person by the name
of Dagiribu’a.
Dakiya remained with her wizard lover,
and married him.
The unfortunate Bagido’u who obvi¬
ously suffers from consumption, a disease with which all
his family are more or less tainted, attributes his ills to
his successful rival’s sorcery, even now, as he believes,
active against him.
This is very galling, for he has the
injury of black magic added to the insult of his wife’s
seduction.
When I came back to Omarakana in 1918, I
found my friend Bagido’u much worse.
By now (1928),
this man of extraordinary intelligence, good manners,
and astounding memory, the last worthy depository of
the family tradition of the Tabalu, is no doubt dead.
The formalities of divorce are as simple as those by
which marriage is contracted.
The woman leaves her
husband’s house with all her personal belongings, and
moves to her mother’s hut, or to that of her nearest ma¬
ternal kinswoman.
There she remains, awaiting the
course of events, and in the meantime enjoying full
sexual freedom.
Her husband, as likely as not, will try
to get her back.
He will send certain friends with
“peace offerings” (koluluvi, or lula) for the wife and for
those with whom she is staying.
Sometimes the gifts
are rejected at first, and then the ambassadors are sent
again and again.
If the woman accepts them, she has to
return to her husband, divorce is ended and marriage re¬
sumed.
If she means business, and is determined not to
go back to her wedded life, the presents are never ac¬
cepted j then the husband has to adjust himself as best
he may, which means that he begins to look for another
girl.
The dissolution of marriage entails in no case the
restitution of any of the inaugural marriage gifts ex¬
changed, unless, as we shall see, the divorced woman
should remarry.
The girl, if she is still young enough, now resumes
her prenuptial life and leads the free, untrammelled
existence of a nakubukvoabuya (unmarried girl), entering
upon liaison after liaison, and living in bachelors’ houses.
One of the liaisons may lengthen out and develop into a
new marriage.
Then the new husband must present a
valuable object (vaygu’a) to his predecessor, in recom¬
pense for the one given to the wife’s family at the begin¬
ning of the first marriage.
The new husband must also
give another vaygu’a to his wife’s relatives, and he then
receives from them the first annual harvest gift—vilakuria—and the subsequent yearly tribute in yams.
It
seemed to me that a divorcee was much more independ¬
ent of family interference in choosing her new husband
than an ordinary unmarried girl.
The initial gifts of
food (pepe’i, etc.) are not given in the case of such a
remarriage.
There is, apparently, no social stigma on a
girl or a man who has been married and divorced, al¬
though as a matter of amour propre no one wishes to
own that he or she has been abandoned by the other.
It goes without saying that the children, in case of di¬
vorce, always follow their mother} and this is no doubt
another reason why divorce is less popular with men than
with women.
During the interim, when their mother is
living as a spinster, they remain in the household of her
nearest married maternal relative.
When a man dies, his wife is not set free by the event.
It may be said without paradox that, in a way, the strictest
and heaviest shackles of marriage are laid on her after
the real tie has been dissolved by death.
Custom com¬
pels her to play the burdensome role of chief mourner;
to make an ostentatious, dramatic, and extremely onerous
display of grief for her husband from the moment of his
demise until months, at times years, afterwards.
She has
to fulfil her part under the vigilant eyes of the public,
jealous of exact compliance with traditional morals, and
under the more suspicious surveillance of the dead man’s
kindred, who regard it as a special and grievous offence
to their family’s honour if she flags for a single moment
in her duty.
The same applies in a smaller degree to a
widower, but in his case the mourning is less elaborate
and burdensome, and the vigilance not so relentless.
The ritual in the early stages of widowhood reveals in
a direct and intimate manner a most interesting complex
of ideas—some very crude and quaint—concerning kin¬
ship, the nature of marriage, and the purely social ties
between father and children.
The whole mortuary ritual
is, in fact, perhaps the most difficult and bewildering
aspect of Trobriand culture for the investigating sociolo¬
gist.
In the overgrowth of ceremonial, in the inextricable
maze of obligations and counter-obligations, stretching
out into a long series of ritual acts, there is to be found
a whole world of conceptions—social, moral, and mytho¬
logical—the majority of which struck me as quite unex¬
pected and difficult to reconcile with the generally accepted
views of the human attitude towards death and mourning.
Throughout this ritual, the unfortunate remains of the
man are constantly worried.
His body is twice exhumed;
it is cut up; some of its bones are peeled out of the car148
cass, are handled, are given to one party and then to
another, until at last they come to a final rest.
And what
makes the whole performance most disconcerting is the
absence of the real protagonist—Hamlet without the
Prince of Denmark.
For the spirit of the dead man
knows nothing about all that happens to his body and
bones, and cares less, since he is already leading a happy
existence in Tuma, the netherworld, having breathed of
the magic of oblivion and formed new ties (see ch. xii,
sec. 5).
The ritual performances at his twice-opened
grave and over his buried remains, and all that is done
with his relics, are merely a social game, where the various
groupings into which the community has re-crystallized
at his death play against each other.
This, I must add
with great emphasis, represents the actual contemporary
view of the natives, and contains no hypothetical refer¬
ence to the origins or past history of this institution.
Whether the dead man always had his spiritual back
turned on the Trobriand mortuary ritual, or whether his
spirit has gradually evaporated from it—it is not for the
field-worker to decide.
In this context we shall have to
confine ourselves to the study of mortuary practices in
their barest outline only.
A complete account of them
would easily fill a volume of the present size.
We shall,
therefore, select such features as throw light on the ties
of marriage, and on the ideas of kinship and relationship;
and even this will have to be done in a somewhat sche¬
matic and simplified form.1
1 Compare the brief account of these ceremonies among the Northern
Massim, by Professor C. G. Seligman, The Melanesians .of British New
Guinea.
Let us take the death of a man of consequence in the
fulness of age, leaving behind a widow, several children
and brothers.
From the moment of his death, the dis¬
tinction between his real, that is matrilineal, kinsmen
(■veyola) on the one hand, and his children, relatives-inlaw and friends on the other, takes on a sharp and even
an outwardly visible form.
The kinsmen of the deceased
fall under a taboo; they must keep aloof from the corpse.
They are not allowed either to wash or adorn or fondle
or bury it; for if they were to touch or to come near it,
pernicious influences from the body would attack them
and cause their disease and death.
These pernicious in¬
fluences are conceived in the form of a material exhala¬
tion, issuing from the corpse and polluting the air.
It is
called bwaulo, a word which also designates the cloud of
smoke which surrounds a village especially on steamy,
calm days.
The necrogenic bwaulo, invisible to common
eyes, appears to a witch or sorcerer as a black cloud
shrouding the village. It is innocuous to strangers, but
dangerous to kinsmen (ch. xiii, sec. i).
The kindred must also not display any outward signs
of mourning in costume and ornamentation, though they
need not conceal their grief and may show it by weeping.
Here the underlying idea is that the maternal kinsmen
0veyola)
are hit in their own persons; that each one suf¬
fers because the whole sub-clan to which they belong has
been maimed by the loss of one of its members.
“As if
a limb were cut off, or a branch lopped from a tree.”
Thus, though they need not hide their grief, they must
not parade it.
This abstention from outward mourning
extends, not only to all the members of the sub-clan be¬
yond the real kinsmen, but to all the members of the clan
to which the dead man belonged.
On the other hand,
the taboo against touching the corpse applies primarily to
the members of the sub-clan and especially to the actual
kinsmen, to whom, of course, the temptation to touch the
corpse, as an expression of love, would be strongest.
Quite different, in the native idea, is the relation of the
widow, and of the children and relatives-in-law, to the
dead and to his corpse.
They ought, according to the
moral code, to suffer and to feel bereaved.
But in feeling
thus they are not suffering directly; they are not griev¬
ing for a loss which affects their own sub-clan (dala) and
therefore their own persons.
Their grief is not sponta¬
neous like that of the veyola (maternal kinsmen), but a
duty almost artificial, springing as it does from acquired
obligations.
Therefore they must ostentatiously express
their grief, display it, and bear witness to it by outward
signs.
If they did not, they would offend the surviving
members of the dead man’s sub-clan.
Thus an interest¬
ing situation develops, giving rise to a most strange spec¬
tacle: a few hours after the death of a notable, the vil¬
lage is thronged by people, with their heads shaven, the
whole body thickly smeared with soot, and howling like
demons in despair.
And these are the non-kinsmen of the
dead man, the people not actually bereaved.
In contrast iO
these a number of others are to be seen in their usual at¬
tire, outwardly calm and behaving as if nothing had hap¬
pened.
These represent the sub-clan and clan of the de¬
ceased, and are the actually bereaved.
Thus by a devious
reasoning, tradition and custom produce the reverse of
what would seem natural and obvious to us or any ob¬
server from almost any other culture.
Among those who display their grief, it is easy to dis¬
tinguish several groups and grades.
There is the rank
and file of mourners, comprising all the people belonging
to the remaining three clans 5 for, when a notable dies,
everyone in the village community puts on mourning,
except the members of his own clan.
A small group is
busy about the body and the grave; this consists of the
male children and brothers-in-law of the deceased. Near¬
est to the corpse and plunged most deeply in the mimicry
of grief are seated a few women, among whom one, the
widow, is conspicuous, supported by her daughters and
sisters.
In this group, and it may be in that of the sons
also, an observer well acquainted with these natives would
be able to distinguish an interesting interplay of feigned
and merely histrionic grief with real and heartfelt sorrow.
OF
THE
With this sociological scheme before us, we can now
follow the sequence of event and ritual which begins
automatically with a man’s death.
When death is seen
to be approaching, the wife and children, kinsmen and
relatives-in-law crowd round the bed, filling the small
hut to overflowing.
The consummation of death is
marked by a frantic outburst of wailing.
The widow,
who generally stands at the head of the dying man, ut¬
ters the first piercing shriek, to which immediately other
women respond, till the village is filled with the strange
harmonies of the melodious dirge.
From this moment
all the varied activities of the days, and even weeks,
which follow will be carried on to the choral accompani¬
ment of a long-drawn wail which never stops for one
instant.
At times it swells up in violent and discordant
gusts; then ebbs again into soft, melodious strains, mu¬
sically well expressing sorrow.
To me, this powerful
uneven stream of sound, flowing over the village and
enveloping as it were all these human beings in a feeble,
imbecile protest against death, became symbolic of all
that was deeply human and real in the otherwise stiff,
conventional, incomprehensible ritual of mourning.
First the corpse is washed, anointed, and covered with
ornaments (pis. 32 and 33)> then the bodily apertures
are filled with coconut husk fibre, the legs tied together,
and the arms bound to the sides.
Thus prepared, it is
placed on the knees of a row of women who sit on the
floor of the hut, with the widow or widower at one end
holding the head.1
They fondle the corpse, stroke the
skin with caressing hands, press valuable objects against
chest and abdomen, move the limbs slightly and agitate
the head.
The body is thus made to move and twist with
slow and ghastly gestures to the rhythm of the incessant
wailing.
The hut is full of mourners, all intoning the
melodious lamentation.
Tears flow from their eyes and
1 Cf pi Ixv in Argonauts of the IVestern Pacific, where this act is re¬
constructed outside the hut for purposes of photography and the widow
is replaced by the son.
mucus from their noses, and all the liquids of grief
are carefully displayed and smeared over their bodies
or otherwise conspicuously disposed.
Outside, certain
women, usually relatives-in-law of the dead man, per¬
form a slow rhythmic dance (the vaysali) with relics in
their hands (pi. u).
The sons in the meantime dig the grave, which in olden
days was always on the central place of the village, but
which now, by the white man’s decree, must be on the
outskirts.
A few hours after death the body is laid in it,
wrapped in mats, and is covered with logs, which leave a
shallow space above.
On this layer of logs the widow
lies down to keep vigil over the corpse.
Her daughter
may be beside her; round the brink of the grave are her
sisters, kinswomen and friends, and the other relativesin-law of the dead man.
As night draws on, the central
place fills with people; for even nowadays the white
man’s regulations against burial in the baku are circum¬
vented by making a temporary grave there, or placing the
corpse on the ground.
Here the mourners, the kinsmen,
all the villagers and many guests from far afield congre¬
gate to hold a most remarkable wake (yawait).
The chief mourners and kinsmen in appropriate groups
keep the central position round the grave.
Outside this
inner ring, the villagers and guests are seated, each com¬
munity in a separate body, their mood and behaviour be¬
coming less tragic as they are farther removed from the
corpse, until on the outskirts of the crowd, we find people
in animated conversation, eating and chewing betel nut.
The central group of mourners intones the deep wail of
H4
H
u-
i*
Q
O
3J
Widow in Full Mourning
The breast is covered voith black beads
(seeds of an unidentified plant) ; she
wears a necklace of balls from her
husband s hair, another of rope, yet
another of his calico, and, on top of
all, the jaw-bone.
Her head is com¬
pletely shaved and her face blackened.
ICk. VI, 3]
sorrow, the others sing songs, and, as the night goes on,
people will stand up and recite fragments of magic in
honour of the departed, chanting them over the heads of
the crowd.
The body is not allowed to remain long in peace—if
the weird, noisy, and discordant din of singing, wailing,
and haranguing can be so described.
On the following
evening, the body is exhumed, and inspected for signs of
sorcery (see pi. 33).
Such an inspection yields most im¬
portant clues, as to who caused the death by witchcraft
and for what motive this was done.
I have assisted at
this ceremony several times; the photograph for plate 33
was taken during the first exhumation of Ineykoya, wife
of Toyodala, my best informant in Oburaku.1
Before daybreak after the first exhumation, the body
is taken out of the grave, and some of the bones are re¬
moved from it.
This anatomical operation is done by the
man’s sons, who keep some of the bones as relics and dis¬
tribute the others to certain of their relatives.
This prac¬
tice has been strictly forbidden by the Government—
another instance of the sacrifice of most sacred religious
custom to the prejudice and moral susceptibilities of the
“civilized” white.
Yet the Trobrianders are so deeply
attached to this custom that it is still clandestinely per¬
formed, and I have seen the jaw-bone of a man with
whom I had spoken a few days before dangling from the
neck of his widow (see pis. 34, 35, and 36).
The excision of the bones and their subsequent use as
1 For further information about the signs of sorcery, see Crime and
Custom, pp. 87-91.
relics is an act of piety; the process of detaching them
from the putrefying corpse, a heavy, repugnant, and dis¬
gusting duty.
The sons of the deceased are expected by
custom to curb and conceal their disgust, and to suck some
of the decaying matter when they are cleaning the bones.
Speaking with virtuous pride they will say: “I have sucked
the radius bone of my father; I had to go away and
vomit j I came back and went on.”
After they have
cleansed the bones, which is always done on the seashore,
they return to the village, and the dead man’s kinswomen
ceremonially “wash their mouths” by giving them food
and purify their hands with coconut oil.
The bones are
converted to various purposes, serviceable and ornamental:
the skull is made into a lime pot to be used by the widow ;
the jaw-bone is turned into a neck ornament to hang on
her breast; the radius, ulna, tibia, and some other bones
are carved into lime spatulas to be used with betel and
areca nut.
A curious mixed sentiment underlies this complex of
customs.
On the one hand, it should be the wish of the
widow and children to keep a part of the beloved dead.
“The relic (kayvaluba) brings the departed back to our
mind and makes our inside tender.”
On the other hand
the use of these relics is regarded as a harsh and un¬
pleasant duty, as a sort of pious repayment for all the
benefits received from the father.
As it was explained
to me: “Our mind is grieved for the man who has fed
us, who has given us dainties to eat; we suck his bones
as lime spatulas.”
Or again: “It is right that a child
should suck the father’s ulna.
For the father has held
out his hand to its excrement and allowed it to make
water on to his knee” (compare similar locutions quoted
in section 3 of chapter i). Thus the use of relics is at
the same time a relief to the bereaved widow and chil¬
dren, and an act of filial piety which must be rigorously
observed.
To the dead man’s maternal kinsmen (veyola) the use
of his bones is strictly tabooed. If they broke this taboo
they would fall ill, their bellies would swell and they
might die. The contact is most dangerous when the bone
is still wet with the dead man’s bodily juices. When,
after a few years, the bones are handed over to the kins¬
men, they are presented carefully wrapped in dry leaves,
and are then only gingerly handled by them. They are
finally deposited on rocky shelves overlooking the sea.
Thus the bones pass several times from hand to hand be¬
fore they come to their final rest.
More distant relatives-in-law and friends of the dead
man have his nails, teeth and hair, which they make into
all sorts of mourning ornaments and wear as relics. The
dead man’s personal possessions are used in the same way,
and nowadays, when the bodily relics have frequently to
be concealed, this practice is very much in favour (see
frontispiece).
After the second exhumation the body is buried, the
wake is over, and the people disperse; but the widow,
who, during all this time, has not stirred from her hus¬
band’s side, nor eaten nor drunk nor stopped in her wail¬
ing, is not yet released. Instead she moves into a small
cage, built within her house, where she will remain for
months together, observing the strictest taboos.
She must
not leave the place; she may only speak in whispers; she
must not touch food or drink with her own hands, but
wait till they are put into her mouth; she remains closed
up in the dark, without fresh air or light 5 her body is
thickly smeared over with soot and grease, which will not
be washed off for a long time.
She satisfies all the neces¬
sities of life indoors, and the excreta have to be carried
out by her relatives.
Thus she lives for months shut up
in a low-roofed, stuffy, pitch-dark space, so small that
with outstretched hands she can almost touch the walls
on either side; it is often filled with people who assist or
comfort her, and pervaded by an indescribable atmosphere
of human exhalations, accumulated bodily filth, stale
food, and smoke.
Also she is under the more or less
active control and surveillance of her husband’s matrilineal relatives, who regard her mourning and its inherent
privations as their due.
When the term of her widow¬
hood has almost run its course—its length depends upon
the status of her husband and varies from about six
months to two years—she is gradually released by the
dead man’s kinsmen.
Food is put into her mouth accord¬
ing to a ritual which gives her permission to eat with her
own hands.
Then, ceremonially, she is allowed to speak;
finally she is released from the taboo of confinement and,
still with appropriate ritual, requested to walk forth.
At
the ceremony of her complete release by the female
veyola of the dead man, the widow is washed and
anointed, and dressed in a new gaudy grass skirt in three
colours. This makes her marriageable again-
THE
Throughout the rigorous ritual of mourning, in which
the widow, the orphans, and to a much lesser degree the
other relatives-in-law of the deceased are caught and held
as in a vise, we can observe the working of certain ideas
belonging to the tribal tradition of the Trobrianders.
One especially, the taboo on maternal kinsmen, which
forces them to keep aloof since it is both dangerous to
approach the corpse and superfluous to show grief, is
strikingly visible throughout the whole course of burial,
exhumation, and grave-tending.
The corresponding idea,
that it is the imperative duty of the widow and her rela¬
tives to show grief and perform all the mortuary services,
emphasizes the strength and the permanence of marriage
bonds as viewed by tradition.
It is also a posthumous
continuation of the remarkable system of services which
have to be given to a married man by his wife’s family,
including the woman herself and her children.
In the mortuary phase of these services, however, the
dead man’s sub-clan have to render payment more strictly
and more frequently than he had to do in his life-time.
Immediately after the bones have been cut out and the
remains buried, the dead man’s sub-clan organize the first
big distribution of food and valuables, in which the widow,
children, and other relatives-in-law, as well as the unre¬
lated mourners, are richly paid for the various services
rendered in tending the corpse and digging the grave.
Other distributions follow at stated intervals.
There is
one expressly for women mourners; one for the tenders
of the grave 5 one for the rank and file of mourners; one,
by far the largest, in which presents of valuables and enor¬
mous quantities of food are given to the widow and chil¬
dren, in so far as they, in grief and piety, have used the
bones of the dead man for their lime-chewing or as orna¬
ments.
This intricate series of distributions stretches out
into years, and it entails a veritable tangle of obligations
and duties j for the members of the deceased’s sub-clan
must provide food and give it to the chief organizer, the
headman of the sub-clan, who collects it and then dis¬
tributes it to the proper beneficiaries. These, in their
turn, partially at least, re-distribute it.
And each gift in
this enormous complex trails its own wake of counter¬
gifts and obligations to be fulfilled at a future date.
The ostentation with which the widow and children
have to display their grief, the thickness—literally and
metaphorically speaking—with which they put on their
mourning are indeed striking 3 and the underlying com¬
plex psychology of these things must have become ap¬
parent in the above account.
In the first place, it is a
duty towards the dead and towards his sub-clan, a duty
strongly enjoined by the code of morals and guarded by
public opinion, as well as by the kinsmen.
“Our tears_
they are for the kinsmen of our father to see,” as one of
the mourners simply and directly told me.
In the second
place, it demonstrates to the world at large that the wife
and children were really good to the dead and that they
took great care of him in his illness.
Lastly, and this is
very important, it allays any suspicion of their complicity
in his murder by black magic.
To understand the last
queer motive, one has to realize the extreme fear, the
ever-vigilant suspicion of sorcery, and the unusual lack
of trust in anyone at all with reference to it.
The Tro-
brianders, in common with all races at their culture level,
regard every death without exception as an act of sorcery,
unless it is caused by suicide or by a visible accident, such
as poisoning or a spear thrust.
It is characteristic of their
idea of the bonds of marriage and fatherhood—which
they regard as artificial and untrustworthy under any
strain—that the principal suspicion of sorcery attaches al¬
ways to the wife and children.
The real interest in a
man’s welfare, the real affection, the natural innocence of
any attempt against him are, by the traditional system of
ideas, attributed to his maternal kinsmen.
His wife and
children are mere strangers, and custom persists in ignor¬
ing any real identity of interest between them.1
How utterly this traditional view is generally at vari¬
ance with the economic and psychological reality, has
been shown, and illustrated by many facts in chapter i,
sections I and 2.
For, apart from the personal attach¬
ment which always exists between husband and wife,
father and children, it is clear that a man’s children lose
more at his death than do his kinsmen, who, as his heirs,
always gain materially, especially in the case of a man of
wealth, rank, and importance.
And, in reality, the actual
1 Even this is a simplified account, one in which the ideal of native law
and tradition is emphasized, as is always done by the natives themselves.
The full account of native ideas about sorcery in relation to kinship and
relationship by marriage will have to be postponed to a later publication.
feelings of the survivors run their natural course inde¬
pendently of the mimic and official display of grief.
The
existence of an individual reality of thought, sentiment,
and impulse, unfolding itself side by side with the con¬
ventional sentiment and idea contained in and imposed by
a traditional pattern, is one of the most important sub¬
jects of social psychology—a subject on which we need
more material from ethnological investigation, carried
on with a good deal of detail and based upon personal
knowledge of the savages observed.
In the Trobriands, the genuine sorrow of the widow
and children is blurred, overlaid, and made almost un¬
recognizable by the histrionic display of grief.
But their
real feelings can be gauged by observing their behaviour
at other times, especially under critical conditions.
I
have seen more than one case of a husband sitting night
after night at his sick wife’s bedside.
I have seen his
hopes surge and ebb, and unmistakable, even deep, de¬
spair set in as the apparent chances of survival waned.
Differences are clearly distinguishable in the sorrow of
widows and widowers, some merely conforming to cus¬
tom, others genuinely grieving.
To’uluwa, the chief,
though a rather selfish and shallow character, could not
speak about the death of Kadamwasila, his favourite wife,
without visible and real emotion.
Toyodala, the nicest
man I knew in Oburaku (see pi. 33), was for weeks anx¬
iously watching his wife’s illness, and hoping for her re¬
covery.
When she died, he behaved at first like a mad¬
man, and then, during his mourning confinement, in
which I often visited him, he wept so bitterly that his
Widow in Half Mourning
The same ’woman as in the previous
picture, now wearing only one necklace
and the jaw-bone; the hair is partly
grown, she is no longer blackened and
there is a sprig of aromatic herbs in
her right armlet,
(She was married
a few months later.)
[Ch. VI, 3]
A Decorated Jaw-bone
It is the same as shown on plates 14.
and 35.
ICh. VI, 3]
eyesight suffered.
There is no doubt at all that the
kinsmen feel the personal loss much less.
On the other
hand, their conventional sentiment of bereavement and
realization of the maiming of their group do not leave
them unaffected. But here we enter upon a problem,
that of feelings and ideas relating to the solidarity of the
clan, which, if followed up, would take us too far away
from our subject.
The study of marriage has led us away from the study
of sex in the narrower sense of the word.
We have had
to consider questions of social organization, and the legal,
economic, and religious setting of the relation between
husband and wife, parents and children.
This last sub¬
ject, parenthood, will still occupy us in the next two
chapters, before we pass to the detailed analysis of the
sexual impulse in its cultural manifestations among our
natives.
We had to make a digression into the domain of sociology, led thereto by the Trobriand beliefs concerning
procreation and spiritual incarnation and the great in¬
fluence which these exert upon family and kinship.
Let
us now resume our consecutive account by considering the
course of pregnancy and childbirth.
In the first two
sections of this chapter I shall describe one observance
which is of outstanding interest to the ethnologist: the
special public ceremonial performed when a woman is
passing through her first pregnancy.
The succeeding two
sections will be devoted to the customs associated with
childbirth and maternity in general.
I
Pregnancy is first diagnosed by the swelling of the
breasts and the darkening of the nipples.
At this time
a woman may dream that the spirit of one of her kins¬
women brings her the child from the other world to be
reincarnated.
If during the next two or three moons her
menstrual flow makes no appearance, then, say the natives,
it is certain that she has become pregnant
(isuma).
Native embryology teaches that four moons after the ap211
pearance of the baloma in the dream the abdomen begins
to swell j and when this stage in a first pregnancy is
reached, the relatives of the mother-to-be take steps to
provide her with certain ceremonial garments prescribed
by custom 5 a plain white fibre petticoat, and a long cloak
(■saykeulo) of the same material (pi. 42).
These will be
given to her in about the fifth moon of her pregnancy
with a great deal of ceremony, and she will wear them on
that occasion for a month or two and also after she has
given birth to the child.
This ceremony is never per¬
formed for an igamugwa, a woman who has already been
pregnant, but only for an igava’u, a woman who conceives
for the first time.
As with every other ceremonial occasion in the Trobriands, this presentation of the fibre cloak has its place in
a definite sociological scheme.
The duties connected with
it are distributed among certain relatives who subsequently
receive an appropriate payment.
The task of making the
robes and of offering them to the igava'u falls to the
female relatives of the girl’s father—the women whom
she calls generically tabugu—and the lead is taken by
the father’s own sister.
We have already seen on an
earlier occasion of great importance in the life of a girl,
namely when her marriage is about to be concluded, that
it is the father, and not her official guardian, the mother’s
brother, whose consent is decisive and who has to super¬
vise the whole affair.
Again, in this later crisis, it is the
father and his matrilineal kinswomen who take the active
part.
The father summons his sister, his mother, and his
niece, and says to them: “Well, come to my house and cut
the saykeulo for your niece, my daughter.”
The father’s
sister then takes the lead, and rouses as many of her kins¬
women as possible to help in the work.
They come to¬
gether, talk the matter over, and arrange when they will
begin.
The saykeulo is always made in front of the
father’s house, or, if he be a chief, on the central place
of his village.
The women sit down in a wide circle round
a heap of banana leaves to which every worker has con¬
tributed several bundles, frayed ready for use.
Then the
pieces are bound together, amid continuous chatter and a
hubbub of voices and laughter.
It is an exclusively fe¬
male gathering, and no man with any sense of decency
and etiquette would come near.
Four garments have to
be made: two long mantles and two skirts.
One of the
mantles is to be worn at the initial celebration of first
pregnancy and the second when the mother first appears
in public after her confinement; the two skirts are also for
use after the birth.
The four garments can be easily
finished at one sitting, though a second is sometimes
necessary when there are too many gossips present for the
work to go quickly.
When the garments are finished,
usually in the afternoon, the workers pass to the magical
part of the performance.
For, as always in the making
of a really important object, or one which has to be en¬
dowed with definite properties and powers, magic is an
essential part of the process of production.
I had good opportunities for studying the magic of
pregnancy robes.
I observed and photographed the rites
in progress at the village of Tukwa’ukwa, and in the same
village I obtained the formula of saykeulo magic, as it
was then recited, also I discussed the ceremonial with the
actual performers, as well as with women in other lo¬
calities.
The rite is simple, but interesting, for it reveals the
native ideas of the nature of magical force and of the
way in which it operates.
A mat is spread on the ground
and the four pregnancy garments are placed upon it (pi.
43 ).
The women have brought with them the fleshy lower
parts of certain creamy white leaves, which come from a
lily plant bearing a snow-white flower.
These are cut
into pieces (pi. 44) and strewn over the robes.
Those
among the robe-makers who know the formula—and
there are always several of them—kneel round the
bundle, and, bending over it, thrust their faces right into
the fibre stuff (pi. 43), so that it may be well permeated
with the breath which carries the magic words:
“O bwaytuva (a bird similar to the reef heron but
with quite white plumage), hover over Waybeva (the
creek of Tukwa’ukwa village), swoop down to Mkikiya
(the waterhole of the village)! O bwaytuva, hover over
Mkikiya, swoop down to Waybeva!”
This is the exordium (uyula), the opening part of the
magical formula, in which, as we see, a white bird is in¬
vited to hover over the bathing place and the principal
water supply of the village.1
(tapwana) of the spell.
Then follows the main part
In this the phrase bwaytuva
ikata—“the bwaytuva bird sharpens” (i.e. makes brilliant
or resplendent)—is repeated with various words, each of
1 For the structure and general characteristics of the Trobriand sDells
see Argonauts of the IVestern Pacific, ch. xviii.
v
Cutting the White Lily Leaves
The Way into the Water
which describes a part of the pregnancy robe.
In the
Trobriands, as no doubt in every other society, each detail
of a lady’s garment is carefully defined and has its
specific name.
These are enumerated and coupled one
by one with the leading phrase.
Thus the forfnula con¬
tains a series of such incantations as “the bwaytuva bird
makes resplendent the top hem of the robe,” “the bway¬
tuva bird makes resplendent the fringe of the robe,” and
so on.
Then the same phrase is repeated with various
words describing parts of the body: “the bwaytuva bird
makes resplendent the head of my tabu (my brother’s
child),” “the bwaytuva makes resplendent the nose of my
brother’s child” \ and so on to the cheeks, the chest, the
belly, the groins, the buttocks, the thighs, the knees, the
calves, and the feet.
The formula thus enumerates every
part of the body with a consistent pedantry characteristic
of Trobriand magic.
The end-part (dogina) runs thus:
“No more is it her head, her head is like the pallor
before dawn; no more is it her face, her face is like the
white sprouts of a young leaf of the areca plant j praise
her by robbing her house! praise her by demanding a
tilewa’i (flattery gift)!”
This formula expresses, in terms of magic, a wish to
improve the personal appearance of the wearer of the
robes, and it is especially associated with the whiteness
of her skin.
A bird of beautiful form and of brilliantly
white plumage is invoked at the beginning, and its name
acts as the most powerful charm in the principal part of
the formula.
Its association with the names of the creek
and the waterhole in which the pregnant woman has to
bathe and wash, may possess the power to whiten her skin.
The conclusion anticipates the result, a form very
common in the Trobriand spells: the face of the pregnant
woman becomes pallid like the white sky before dawn, and
like the young sprouts of areca.
The last two sentences
of the formula refer to the curious custom which allows
anyone who gives flattery or praise after a remarkable
achievement or performance and removes a piece of
decoration as a pledge, to demand a special gift, tilewa’i.
In the case of a still more remarkable achievement, the
lucky man who is to gain by it may have to see all his
belongings on which the members of the community can
lay hand kwaykwaya—that is, “taken away as expression
of admiration.”
The remarkable achievement thus fore¬
shadowed in the first pregnancy rites is the resplendent
whiteness of the pregnant woman’s skin.
From another village—Omarakana—I obtained the
initial fragment of the magic used there by certain women.
In this formula also a bird is addressed:
“O white pigeon, come, lull our pregnancy cloak to
sleep. I shall go and lull your egg to sleep.”
The pigeon invoked is notable for the whiteness of its
plumage and of its egg’s shell.
The “lulling” of the
pregnancy cloak refers, it is said, to the child to be born,
whose skin should also be made white.
We shall have
to speak at some length about this fundamental idea of
whitening the skin which underlies the pregnancy cere¬
monial.
In their general character, the proceedings are similar
to most rites in the Trobriands.
The women finish the
robe and then, in very much the same business-like
manner, go on to the magic.
The white lily leaves are
cut by one of them immediately after the robe is finished
(pi. 44), and the garment is spread on the mat by another.
While the magic is being recited (pi. 43), no disturbing
noises are allowed, but neither is anyone excluded; the
onlookers adopt no special attitude, nor have they any
observances to keep.
After the women have impregnated
the robes with the magical virtues of the spell, they beat
the bundle with their palms.
This increases the garments’
power of imparting whiteness to the wearer.
The tap¬
ping is conceived as the “waking up of the garment.”
The rite is called yuvisila saykeulo, the breathing over of
the pregnancy robe.
The four robes, together with the
white cut leaves strewn over them, are now covered with
another mat, so that the magic may not evaporate, and
the whole bundle is placed in the house of the principal
tabula, the father’s sister.
On the day following the making and charming of the
robe, the actual investment of the pregnant woman takes
place.
With this is associated her public bathing and
washing and her magical adornment.
I shall describe
the ceremony as I saw it in the village of Tukwa’ukwa,
where, in May, 1918, I and my friend, the late Mr.
B. Hancock, were able to take photographs of it (pis. 43,
44, 45, 46, 49, and 50).
My friend had also photo217
graphed and recorded the ceremony about a year before
when it had taken place in the same village (pis. 42, 47,
and 48).
In the course of my narrative, I shall indicate
such local differences as obtain between the coastal vil¬
lages, of which Tukwa’ukwa is one, and the inland set¬
tlements, distant from the seashore.
Very early in the morning, the whole village, or at
least all its female inhabitants, are astir and preparing
for the spectacle.
The tabula (father’s sister and other
paternal relatives) forgather in the father’s hut, where
the pregnant woman awaits them.
When all is ready,
the prospective mother proceeds to the seashore, walking
between two of her tabula.
From the inland villages not too far distant from the
sea, the procession would also go down to the beach; but
those villages far enough away to consider themselves
“inland people” perform the pregnancy bath at the waterhole where they usually wash.
If the woman is of high
rank, she will be carried all the way to the shore or to the
waterhole.
part.
In the ceremony, only women take an active
Tukwa’ukwa lies right on a tidal inlet of the lagoon,
and the woman was carried to the beach by her female
tabula.
Since this is a purely female ceremony, good
manners indicate that no man should participate, and men
would not enter the water to look at the performance.
There is no specific taboo, however, nor were any objec¬
tions raised to my presence.
Arrived at the water’s edge, the women arrange them¬
selves in two rows, facing each other, and join hands with
The Ritual Bathing
Second Charming of the Pregnancy Cloaks
[CA. Fill, 2]
their opposite partners crosswise, in the manner called bychildren “queen’s chair.” Over this living bridge the
pregnant woman walks, holding on by the women’s heads,
and as she advances, the rear couple move to the front,
constantly extending the bridge. Thus they go some dis¬
tance into the water, the pregnant woman walking dry
foot on the arms of her companions (pi. 45). At a cer¬
tain point she is allowed to jump into the water. Then
they all begin to play with one another, the prospective
mother being always the centre of the game. Her com¬
panions splash water over her, and duck and drench her
to the utmost, all in a spirit of exuberant good-natured
playfulness (pi. 46). It is the duty of the tabula to see
that the woman is well washed during the ceremonial
bath. “We rub her skin with our hands, we rub her sur¬
face, we cleanse her.”
The drenching and washing being thoroughly done,
she is brought on to the shore and placed on a mat. Al¬
though on most occasions she is carried by her relatives
to the beach, from this moment she has to be completely
isolated from the earth, and must not touch the soil with
her feet. She is placed on a coconut mat and her tabula
(father’s maternal relatives) proceed to make her toilet
very carefully and with an elaborate magic ritual. This
magic of beauty has certain affinities with the ceremonial
performed by men during the kula expeditions (see Ar¬
gonauts of the Western Pacific, ch. xiii, sec. 1), though
the spells of men and women differ.1 It is, on the other
11 have stated in the above-mentioned work, on p. 336, that “This
branch of Kula magic has two counterparts in the other magical lore of
the Trobrianders. One of them is the love magic, through which people
hand, identical in spell and rite with the beauty magic
performed by women on men at great dancing festivals;
in fact, the spells which I obtained at the pregnancy rites
and which are given later in this book, are used on either
occasion (see ch. xi, secs. 2-4).
After her bath, the pregnant woman has first to be
rubbed and dried.
This is done ritually.
Some coconut
husk fibre, which is kept ready at hand, is charmed over
with the kaykakaya spell by the tabula (father’s sister)
and the skin of the young woman is rubbed.1
Then some
of the soft spongy leaves of the wageva plant, which
usually serve the native as a natural towel, are charmed
with another formula and the woman is rubbed again.
After her skin has been thoroughly dried, the pregnant
woman is anointed with charmed coconut oil, and the
attendants put a new brightly coloured fibre skirt on her,
while the wet bathing skirt is removed from underneath.
This festive skirt is not one of those recently made for
the pregnancy, nor is its putting on associated with any
magical rite.
But a purely magical action follows: the
are rendered attractive and irresistible.
Their belief in these spells is
such that a man would always attribute all his success in love to their
efficiency.
Another type closely analogous to the beauty magic of the
Kula is the specific beauty magic practised before big dances and fes¬
tivities.”
This statement is slipshod, in that the real counterparts of
mwasila (kula magic) of beauty are the magic performed on dancers and
described here in ch. xi, and the magic of pregnancy with which we are
dealing just now. The three forms, rmuasila, pregnancy rites and festive
beauty magic are, in fact, akin to each other, though only pregnancy
magic and the festive ritual are the same in spell and rite, while the
mwasila resembles both only in aim and doctrine.
Love magic, though
presenting some similarities, not only differs profoundly in rite and spell
but is based on a special native doctrine.
(Cf. below, ch. xi.)
For the text of this and the subsequent spells here mentioned see
below, ch. xi, sec. 3 and 4. The spells of rmuasila, quoted on pp. 337-34.2
of Argonauts, should also be consulted.
face of the young woman is stroked with a mother-ofpearl shell while one of the tabula mutters a spell of
beauty (see ch. xi, sec. 4).
The three acts of the cere¬
monial so far described are supposed to make her skin
smooth, clear, and soft, and her appearance generally
beautiful. Several successive stages of personal decoration
follow, each performed in a ritual manner.
First, mut¬
tering a magical formula, a tabula decorates the prospec¬
tive mother’s mouth and face with red paint.
After that
black paint is applied to the face with another spell.
Then the hair is combed while yet another formula is
recited.
Red hibiscus flowers are fastened in her hair,
and aromatic leaves with charms breathed into them
thrust into her armlets.
After this the young woman is
considered to be fully arrayed.
All this ritual dressing and adornment is associated
with beauty magic, which custom and tradition impose at
this stage but which stands in no direct connection with
pregnancy or the pregnancy robes.
Only when this
beauty magic has been performed may the proper preg¬
nancy rite, the investment with the long robe, be car¬
ried out. The tabula place one of the two saykeulo (preg¬
nancy robes) on the young woman’s shoulders, and once
more recite the formula used in the making of it, breath¬
ing the charm right into the robe (see pi. 47).
It is also
customary at this point, though not imperative, to recite
over her some magic against the dangers of pregnancy
and childbirth, a magic prophylactic against the special
evil of sorcery, which is always dreaded at a confinement
(see next section).
Throughout this ritual the prospective mother has been
standing on a mat, for, as we have already said, her bare
feet must not touch the soil after the bath.
Now, dressed
in full dress and covered with the long fibre mantle, she
is lifted up by two of her tabula (pis. 48 and 49) and
carried to her father’s house, where a small platform has
been erected on which she is set down (pi. 50).
It is
customary for a woman of chieftain’s rank to go, not to
her father’s, but to her maternal uncle’s house, and there
to remain seated on a high platform.
Upon this platform the woman has to stay for the
rest of the day.
During that time she must remain prac¬
tically motionless, she must not speak except to ask for
food or drink, and even this she ought if possible to do
by signs. She must not touch food with her hands; it is
put into her mouth by her tabula. Her immobility is only
broken from time to time that she may wash her face,
her arms and shoulders, and rub her skin.
For this pur¬
pose water is either brought to her in a wooden basin by
her husband, or she is carried by two women back to the
water’s edge, and there she washes standing on a mat.
After sunset she is allowed to retire to her father’s house
to rest, but the next day she has to return to the platform
3-fid there resume her seated immobility, and observe all
her taboos as on the first day.
This is repeated for from
three to five days, according to the rank and importance
of the woman and of her husband.
Nowadays, with the
relaxation of all customs, one day is often considered long
enough.
When the ceremonial vigil on the platform is over, the
woman may return for a few more months to her hus¬
band’s house j or she may go to the house of her father
or of her maternal uncle.
To one of these she must in
any case repair for her confinement.
She dresses in the
saykeulo (pregnancy mantle) until it is worn out.
As a
rule it lasts for about two months, so that it has to be
discarded some two months before confinement.
There is more than one important feature associated
with the first pregnancy ritual.
As always in the Tro-
briands, ceremonial services rendered by a certain class of
relative must be repaid by the actual, that is maternal,
kinsmen of the person served.
In this case the work, the
magic, and the ritual are performed by the female rela¬
tives of the father.
In the distribution of food (sagali),
which immediately follows the ceremony, it is the moth¬
er’s brother, the brother, and the other maternal kinsmen
of the young woman, who do the distributing.
If she is
a woman of small importance, this distribution takes place
before her father’s house.
But if she, or her father or
husband, be a person of high rank, it is carried out on the
central place of the village.
The procedure is the same
as in the mortuary and other ceremonial distributions.’
The food is divided into heaps and every heap is allotted
to a single person, his or her name being called out in a
loud voice.
After the first pregnancy rites, each one of
the tabula who has been working at the robe and taking
part in the ceremony receives a heap of food.
Besides
this, the givers of the sagali (distribution) usually select
1 See Argonauts of the IVestern Pacific, pp. 182-3, an^ references in
Index, s.v. sagali, and below, ch. xi, sec. 2.
some specially large and fine yams, or a bunch of bananas
or areca nut, and carry the gift to the house of the pa¬
ternal aunt, and perhaps to those of one or two other
relatives as well.
Such additional payment is called
'pemkwala.
A minor but very interesting ceremonial is associated
with this distribution.
The father of the pregnant woman
—who has nothing to do with the sagali—chooses some
specially good food and carries it, on his own account, to
certain women who are known to possess a form of black
magic of which pregnant women stand in great fear.
“Black” this magic is, literally as well as metaphorically,
for by addressing the mwanita (black millepede), the sor¬
ceress is able to make a pregnant woman’s skin black, as
black as the worm itself.
The father’s gift, which is
brought to the house door and belongs to the class called
katubwadela bwala (house-closing-gift), is intended to
forestall and arrest any evil intentions which the sorceress
might harbour.
As one of my informants put it: “That
their anger might come to an end, that they might not
perform the evil magic that blackens the skin of that
woman, that pregnant one.”
This brings us back to the question of the idea under¬
lying the first pregnancy ceremony, and of its aims and
purpose.
If the average Trobriander is asked the reason
or cause, uyulay of a custom, the usual ready answer is one
of the stereotyped phrases, tokunabogwo ayguri (“of old
it has been ordained”), Laba’i layma (“it came from
Laba’i,” the mythological centre of the district), tom¬
way a, tomwaya, ivagise (“the ancients have arranged it”).
In other words, the custom has in their eyes a traditional
sanction; and every respectable person among savages, as
well as among ourselves, has, of course, to do a thing
because it is done and because it always has been done.
But I obtained a certain number of special reasons for
- this particular usage besides the general one.
Some main¬
tain that the ceremony makes for a quick and easy birth;
“for,” as they say, “the playing about in the water loosens
the child in the womb.”
Some say that it assures the
health of the mother and of the baby; and yet others that
it is necessary for the proper formation of the foetus.
One woman gave as the reason for the ceremony, that the
spirit child was said to enter the woman while she was in
the ritual bath, but her statement was not confirmed by
anyone else, and I consider it spurious.
But the prevalent opinion of the natives is that the
ceremony is to whiten the skin of the woman.
This
opinion was expressed to me by my best informants among
the men, as well as by several women with whom I dis¬
cussed the matter.
It is also in harmony with the text of
the magical formula and with the ritual actions, as well
as with the nature of the central symbol, the pregnancy
mantle.
The use of the saykeuloy as my informants
pointed out, is to keep the sun off the skin.
The woman
has to wear it after the ceremonial bathing, and when
she has had to discard it she should keep indoors as much
as possible until the confinement.
This idea of whiteness
as a thing to be desired is also expressed in the main
ceremony of first bathing, and in the subsequent ritual
washings, which the pregnant woman continues until her
confinement and after it.
It is impossible to get beyond the idea that whiteness
as such is desirable.
One thing is clear, however.
Al¬
though whiteness of the skin is usually regarded as a
personal attraction, in this case the woman is not made
white in order to be erotically seductive.
When I asked
why a pregnant woman must try to make her skin white,
I received the answer: “If a woman does not wash and
anoint, and if her skin is black, people will say this woman
is very bad, she has men in her mind, she does not look
after her confinement.”
Again they would say, explain¬
ing the motive for the whole ceremony: “This is done
to prepare her skin for the confinement washings; and to
make her desire to be white.
Thus we see when her skin
is white that she does not think about adultery.”
From
another informant I received the statement: “The saykeulo covers her up completely: breasts, legs, back; only
her face you see.
It makes her skin white, it shows she
does not have connection with men.”
Thus the woman
is made white and beautiful by all this magic.
Yet she
must hide her charms, she must not attract other men,
and she has to keep more stringently faithful than at any
other time of her wedded life.
Nay, as will be seen, she
must even abstain from lawful intercourse with her hus¬
band.
In the foregoing section the ceremony of first preg¬
nancy was described.
Now we proceed to the customs of
pregnancy and confinement in general.
The ritual bath¬
ing, the ceremonial investment with the pregnancy man226
Guarded from Contact with Earth
iCh. Fill, 2]
Return to the Father’s House
tie, the magic of whiteness and of beauty, are only per¬
formed before the first child is born.
But making the
skin as white as possible by ordinary means, including the
use of the mantle, is a feature of every pregnancy.
On
subsequent occasions the mantle is made by the woman
herself or it may be given by a tabula, and repaid by her,
but as a private transaction only.
Some five months after conception, that is at the time
of the ritual bathing in a first pregnancy, the prospective
mother begins to observe certain food restrictions.
She
must abstain from what the natives call kavaylu'a (deli¬
cacies which consist mainly of fruit).
The banana, the
mango, the malay apple, the South Sea almond, the paw¬
paw, the bread-fruit, and the natu fruit are forbidden to
her.
This taboo has reference to the future health of the
child.
“If she eat kavaylu'a, the child will have a big
belly 5 it will be full of excrement and will soon die.”
The diet of a pregnant woman is henceforth reduced to
the staple vegetable food (kaulo), that is yams, taro, na¬
tive peas, sweet potatoes, and other produce of the gar¬
den.
She is also allowed to eat meat and fish, but she
must abstain from certain kinds of the latter.
The fish
which she is forbidden to eat are such species as live in
the submarine holes of the coral.
The natives say that
just as it is difficult to haul these fish out of their hiding
places, so the baby would not easily be brought forth.
Fish with sharp, pointed and poisonous fins, which are on
that account dangerous to the fishermen, are taboo to the
pregnant woman.
If she were to eat any of them the
child would be ill-tempered and constantly wailing.
As
pregnancy progresses and the woman becomes big, sexual
intercourse must be abandoned, for, as the natives say,
“the penis would kill the child.”
This taboo is rigorously
observed.
Otherwise the pregnant woman leads a normal life
almost up to the time of her confinement.
She works in
the garden, fetches water and firewood, and cooks the
food for the household.
She has but to shield herself
from the sun by wearing the saykeulo (pregnancy man¬
tle), wash frequently, and anoint herself with coconut
oil.
Only towards the close of pregnancy when the first
saykeulo is worn out and discarded, must she keep out of
the sun and therefore abandon some of the heavier work.
As in a first pregnancy, so in all the subsequent ones,
the woman, about the fifth month, has to take up her
abode in her father’s house and she may remain there or
she may return again to her husband’s house until some
time before the confinement, when she invariably goes to
the house of her parents or maternal uncle.
This re¬
moval to the father’s or mother’s brother’s house is a rule
observed in every childbirth, the woman leaving her hus¬
band’s house in about the seventh or eighth month of her
pregnancy.
This custom is associated with the strong fear of the
dangers which surround a woman in childbed, and which
are conceived to be due to a form of evil magic, which is
called vatula bam (the chilling or paralysing of the
uterus).
And again, in the face of this great danger, we
see once more the interesting recrystallization of kinship
ties, the shifting of responsibility and solidarity.
Here,
again, only the actual maternal kinsmen and kinswomen
are, in the eyes of custom and tribal law, regarded as re¬
liable.
The woman has to go to her father’s house, for
that is also her mother’s home, and her mother is the
proper person to look after her and the baby.
The
mother also is concerned in warding off danger with the
help of her male relatives, who forgather at the house
of the birth and see to it that a proper watch (yausa) is
kept over the lying-in.
Such a watch, kept by men armed
with spears who sit all the night long over fires and guard
the house and its every approach, is considered the main
defence and precaution against sorcerers who, surrounded
by nocturnal birds, are supposed to prowl about, attempt¬
ing to cast the vatula bam magic.
Primarily, it is the duty
of the husband to carry out the yausa, but in this he is
never trusted alone, and the male relatives of the preg¬
nant woman not only assist but also control him. The in¬
teresting thing about this form of sorcery is that it does not
only exist in the fear and superstition of the natives, but
that it is actually attempted and carried out by male sor¬
cerers.
The formula is recited, the house approached, and
the evil charm cast according to the prescribed rites.1
I
have even obtained the spells of this magic and the cura¬
tive counter spells, but as this question essentially belongs
to the subject of sorcery, I shall reserve it for a future
publication.
When her time approaches, the parental house is made
1 Cf. the difference between the purely imaginary witchcraft of the
flying women (yoyova) and the sorcery really carried out by the male
wizards (bcwaga’u), Argonauts of the IVestern Pacific, ch. ii, sec. vii, and
ch. x, sec. i; and ch. ii of this book.
ready.
The father and all the male inmates have to
leave, while some female kinswomen come in to assist the
mother.
When the first pains are felt, the woman is
made to squat on the raised bedstead with a small fire
burning under it.
This is done “to make her blood
liquid,” “to make the blood flow.”
At the critical mo¬
ment the woman in labour and her attendants may repair
to the bush, where confinement is sometimes allowed to
take place, but more usually they remain in the house.
About the actual travail, I have been able to obtain
only the following information. The woman in labour is
seated on a mat placed on the ground, with her legs apart
and her knees raised.
Leaning back, with her hands on
the ground behind her, she rests her weight on her arms.
At her back stands her sister or some other close maternal
relative, who bears heavily on the labouring woman’s
shoulders, pressing down and even thumping her vigor¬
ously.
As the natives say: “This woman presses on the
parturient one so that the baby may fall out quickly.”
The mother of the woman in travail waits to receive the
baby.
Sometimes she catches hold of her daughter’s
knees.
A mat is placed in position, and on this the newly
born is received.
I was told that the baby is allowed to
come to birth by means of natural efforts only, and that
it is never pulled out or manipulated.
“The child will
fall on to the mat, there it lies, then we take it.
not take hold of it before.”
We do
The parturient woman tries
to help on the process by stopping her breath and so
bearing down on the abdomen.
If the labour is very hard they ascribe the fact, of
Vigil on the Platform
plate SI
\_Ch. VIII, 4]
The IVoman ’with the baby is seen wearing her second
saykeulo.
A Mother and Her First-born
course, to the evil magic of the vatula bam and they sum¬
mon someone who knows the vivisa (curative formula) to
counteract this evil.
This is recited over the aromatic
leaves of the kwebila plant, and the body of the woman
is rubbed with them.
Or else the charmed leaves are
placed on her head and then thumped with the fist.
Only
in the most difficult cases and when the vivisa has proved
ineffective would the child be manipulated, and even then,
from what I gathered, very timidly and incompetently.
If the afterbirth does not come out in due course, a stone
is tied to the mother’s end of the navel string.
The
vivisa (curative formula) is then recited over it, and the
woman made to stand up.
If that does not help, they
are at their wit’s end, and the woman is doomed, as they
do not know how to extract the afterbirth by manipula¬
tion.
The natives were very much astonished when they
saw how Dr. Bellamy, who for several years had been
medical officer in the Trobriands, used to remove the
afterbirth.1
Some three days after the birth, one of the tabula
(paternal kinswomen) of the mother of the new-born
child heats her fingers at a fire and kneads off the re¬
maining piece of the navel string near to the baby’s ab¬
domen.
This and the afterbirth are buried in the ground
within the garden enclosure.
Underlying the custom is
a vague idea that it will make the new-born a good gar¬
dener, that it will “keep his mind in the garden.”
After
the removal of the umbilical cord, the child may, though
1 This information I received independently from Dr. Bellamy, at that
time Assistant Resident Magistrate and Medical Officer of the district,
and from the natives.
it need not, be carried out of the house.
The mother has
to remain for a month or so confined within the parental
hut.
Soon after the delivery, a string is twisted by the
tabula and tied round the mother’s chest.
Some magic
is associated with this, but unfortunately I never learnt
what it was nor ascertained the meaning of the ceremony.
Mother and baby spend the greater part of their time
during the first month on one of the raised bedsteads with
a small fire underneath.
This is a matter of hygiene, as
the natives consider such baking and smoking to be very
beneficial for the health, and a sort of prophylactic
against black magic.
No men are allowed into the house,
for, since the woman baked over the fire is usually naked,
no male should enter; but there are no supernatural sanc¬
tions for the custom, nor is any serious harm done if the
taboo should be broken.
After a month or so a magic
is performed called vageda kaypwakova; flowers of the
white lily are burned with some dry wood, while the
charm is spoken, and the woman is covered with the
smoke of the smouldering faggot.
This is done on two
days in succession, and is supposed to make her skin still
whiter.
I did not obtain the formula of this magic.
On
the third day, the tabula ritually wash the young mother,
and rub her skin with leaves charmed by the beauty spell
used in the corresponding rite during the first pregnancy
ceremony.
The woman then goes out with the baby and makes the
round of the village, receiving from friends and her
father’s relatives small gifts of food called va'otu.
After
she has finished the round, there is a mimic driving home
(ibutusi) of her by the tabula (her maternal aunt and
other relatives of the same class), and here she has to re¬
main for another month in seclusion.
During this time husband and wife may only speak
together through the door and glance at each other now
and then.
On no account must they eat together or even
partake of the same food.
Sexual intercourse between
them is strictly taboo for a much longer time, at the least
until the child can walk.
But the stricter rule is to abstain
from intercourse until it is weaned—that is, some two
years after its birth—and this stricter rule is said always
to be observed by men in polygamous households.
The
husband, even one who has several wives, must abstain
from all conjugal or extraconjugal intercourse until the
baby and its mother go out for the first time.
A breach
of any of these rules is said to bring about the death of
the child.
In the case of illegitimate children also, if
the mother copulates too soon, the child is sure to die.
After the second seclusion, mother and child return to
their own household, and the mother resumes her normal
life, although much of her time is taken up with the
baby.
She wears a plain fibre skirt, two of which have
been made for her by her tabula if this has been her first
pregnancy. She also now wears the long mantle, saykeulo,
the second of the two made for her by the tabula before
the first pregnancy (pi. 51).
If it is a second pregnancy,
or if the baby is illegitimate, the skirt and the mantles
are made by herself or privately by a relative, and are
as a rule much shorter (see pi. 90).
Also a young mother
frequently wears a sort of maternity cap, called togebi,
which is often made by twisting a small grass fibre petti¬
coat into a sort of turban.1
Into her armlets she must
insert a bundle of aromatic herbs (vana).
The most important of the cares bestowed on the child
is, of course, concerned with its feeding.
Besides the
mother’s breast which, as I was told, but very seldom
fails, the child is given other food almost from the first
days.
Taro, well boiled, is chewed by the mother or by
some of her relatives, and the mash, called memema, is
given to the infant.
The natives think that the child
would be too weak if it were restricted to its mother’s
milk.
Chewed yams and fish are not given till much
later, when the child is almost a year old.
The child’s
head is smeared with coconut oil mixed with charcoal “to
make the head strong” as the natives say.
One measure
of cleanliness is observed day after day from the first
hours of the baby’s life: it is bathed regularly in warm
water, with which the mother also washes her own skin.
A specially deep wooden platter, called kaykivaywosi, is
used for this purpose.
The water is warmed by throwing
stones heated in the ashes into the platter.
Thus a hot
and somewhat alkaline water is prepared, and this daily
washing, followed by an anointing with coconut oil, is
said to keep the skin of the mother and child white.
The
thC general name for P]ai‘ed discs or folded petticoats worn
on the head as a support for baskets and other loads carried by women
(cf. ch. 1, sec. 3, and pi. 6).
J
weaning of the child takes place long after birth, usually
some two years or, as the natives put it, “when it is able
to say clearly bakam bamom (I want to eat, I want to
drink).”
During the weaning the child is separated from the
mother, and sleeps with its father or with its paternal
grandmother.
When it cries at night a dry breast is given
to it, or some coconut milk.
If it is fretful and loses
condition, it is taken to some distant village where it has
relatives, or from inland villages to the seaside, so that it
may regain its normal health and good spirits.
We have now brought the child up to the time when
he will shortly join his playmates in the small children’s
world of the village.
own amorous life.
In a few years he will begin his
Thus we have closed the cycle which
runs through infantile love-making, youthful intrigues,
settled liaison, marriage, and its results in the production
and rearing of children.
This cycle I have described in
its main outline, giving special consideration to the socio¬
logical aspects as seen in prenuptial intercourse, marriage,
kinship ideas, and the interplay of mother-right and pa¬
ternal influence.
In the following chapters it will be
necessary to describe certain side-issues and psychological
aspects, concerned more particularly with the erotic life
before marriage.
Perhaps
nothing is so akin to the mysterious and stir¬
ring condition which we call falling in love, as that mystic
expectancy of miraculous intervention and of benevolent
and unexpected happenings which comes to all men at
certain psychological moments and forms the founda¬
tion of the human belief in magic.
There is a desire in
every one of us to escape from routine and certainty,
and it can be said, without exaggeration, that to most men
nothing is more cheerless and oppressive than the rigidity
and determination with which the world runs;
and
nothing more repugnant than the cold truths of science,
which express and emphasize the determination of reality.
Even the most sceptical at times rebel against the inevi¬
table causal chain, which excludes the supernatural and,
with it, all the gifts of chance and good fortune.
Love,
gambling and magic have a great deal in common.
In a primitive community, not yet in bond to science,
magic lies at the root of innumerable beliefs and prac¬
tices.
Megwuy which may be almost exactly rendered
by our word “magic,” is, to the Trobriander, a force re¬
siding in man, transmitted to him from generation to
generation through the medium of tradition.
This force
can only become active by the performance of a ritual
appropriate to the occasion, by the recital of proper incan-
tations, and by the observance of specific taboos.
In all
matters relating to love, it is of fundamental importance.
Magic can endow with charm and engender love; magic
can alienate affection in consort or lover; and magic can
produce or enhance personal beauty.
i
THE
The magic of which the purpose is so to increase per¬
sonal
attractiveness that
the performer may become
erotically irresistible to some one member of the opposite
sex, is but one among several kinds of beauty magic.
Personal appearance and charm are not valued on amo¬
rous grounds only.
A woman in her first pregnancy,
as we know, is subject to an elaborate ritual, with spells
to enhance her bodily beauty, which is in no way intended
to make her attractive to men.
She is sexually taboo to
her own husband; and the idea of adultery under such
circumstances is, without exaggeration, morally repul¬
sive to the natives.
Again, a beauty magic has been
described elsewhere which is performed at a certain stage
in an overseas expedition.1
This has no erotic reference—
indeed love-making, on such occasions, is often taboo—
but its purpose is to make the personal charm of the
visitors so irresistible that they will be offered many gifts
of valuable ornaments.
The heroes of ancestral days,
who make themselves beautiful for reasons which have
1 See Argonauts of the Western Pacific, ch. xiii, sec. i, and especially
pp. 335-6. Compare also footnote on p. 219, vol. i, of this work.
nothing to do with sex, figure in the mythology of the
kula (Argonauts, ch. xii). It is important that the prac¬
tice of beauty magic to a directly sexual end should be
placed in its proper setting in this general and intense
interest in personal charm.
In our description of the opportunities given by festive
occasions for mutual admiration and contact, the im¬
portance of beauty and skill in dancing, and of “deport¬
ment” was made clear. Beauty magic is a part of the
personal preparation for all big festivals} special charms
are recited over certain parts of the body during the care
and cleansing of them, and during ornamentation. This
is always done on the last and culminating day of the
period of festival dancing (usigola) or of competitive
games (kayasa), during the third feast in which they
terminate (ch. ix, secs. 3 and 4)* The tension, interest
and personal animosities characteristic of these competitive
displays must be realized before we can understand the
nature and importance of the beauty ceremonial} and we
shall, therefore, give a short account of the proceedings
as ritual observances, but without returning to the games
and amusements round which they centre (see above,
ch. ix, sec. 2).
The festive period, which lasts twenty-eight days,
always begins, as we know, at the full moon after the
return of the ancestral spirits. It is opened by a cere346
monial distribution of food {sagali) (pis. 71 and 72).
A
sagali is a very important institution in the Trobriandsj
it accompanies most ceremonial occasions, such as mortu¬
ary rites, commemoration feasts, competitive enterprises
and the annual season of amusement.
The mortuary
sagali (distributions), which are the most important, are
based upon the division into clans and sub-clans (see ch. vi,
sec. 4, and ch. xiii, sec. 5), since members of only one
clan always act as distributors, men of the remaining
clans receiving the food.
At other times the apportion¬
ment of the food follows some other sociological prin¬
ciple.
In all cases, however, it is the headman of the
local community who officiates as “master of the distri¬
bution” {tolls a gait).
He and his kinsmen arrange the
allotment of each heap of yams, moving among them,
discussing and memorizing (pi. 71).
After that the same
committee slowly walk from one heap to another and
the master or his spokesman calls out the name or descrip¬
tion of the recipient.
When this has been done, the men
move away from the place and, after a time, the women
belonging to each recipient collect the yams in baskets and
carry them to their storehouses (pi. 72)* H a sma^
sagali, such as is held within the community at the be¬
ginning of a dancing or playing season, the duty of pro¬
viding the food invariably falls on the master and his
kinsmen, while the renown {butura) of the distribution
goes to their credit, and those who receive food are re¬
sponsible to them for the success of the entertainments
which follow.
The distribution in fact imposes an obligation on all
participants to go on steadily with the dance, game, or
whatever special display has been chosen, for the whole
period.
In an usigola (dancing period) each heap of
food would be allotted according to its size, and be given
to a special class of performer.
One of the largest would
go to the leaders of the round dance {tokolimatala).
The
three men who perform the complicated figure dance, the
solemn kasawaga, receive an equally big portion.
The
singers (,tokwaypo’u), a body of no mean importance, also
have their special place in the distribution.
Smaller heaps
of different sizes are given to the drummers, the mutes in
the figure dance, the boys who catch the iguana for the
drumskin, and to all the rest of the villagers, according
to the part they play in the proceedings.
In a sagali (dis¬
tribution), therefore, the respective importance of each
group is emphasized and this causes a certain amount of
tension and jealousy, and some little boasting.
On the first day, magic is performed over a conchshell and over food.
The conch-shell is blown on that
day and also during the dance; the food is buried wher¬
ever a road enters the village.
Both rites are meant
magically to enhance the splendour of the performance.
The charmed conch-shell announces the coming display
with the thrilling ostentation of magical power.
The
burial of the food expresses the desire for plenty within
the village, is a symbol of it, and is believed to effect it.
I was unable to obtain the formula of this magic, so my
information is but approximate.
After these ceremonies, the dancing period begins.
At
first, thei e is much to do in the way of learning, training,
and preliminary contests.
In the middle of the month
a second sagali (distribution of food) is held, called
katumwalela kasakasa (the priming of the rank and file).
There is a special dance on such a day, but no other rites
are performed.
Finally, at the next full moon, there comes the kovayse
(the winding up), which lasts for three days, and is the
main festivity of the period.
Two days before the full
moon, there is a great communal eating of sago or taro
pudding (see pis. 5 and 86). This day is called itavakayse
kaydebu (“preparing of the dancing shield”), or itava¬
kayse bisila (“preparing of the pandanus streamer”), in
reference to the shield and streamer which are both used
in dancing.
On the next day, which is called itokolukwa',iy
the same proceedings are repeated.
On both days cere¬
monial dancing takes place.
The third day is called luvayam, “the day of consum¬
mation,” or lafula, “the rounding-off day,” and is a great
occasion.
People from many villages are invited, and
begin to arrive in the morning, soon filling the village
street and surrounding spaces.
Each community sits in
a group, camping on mats, surrounded with baskets and
children.
Those on more intimate terms with their hosts
assist them in the preparations.
The villagers, with
serious set faces, move quickly to and fro among the
guests, in gala dress, some already adorned for the
dance—the men perhaps in female grass petticoats with
the whole body decked out in valuable ornaments and
flowers.
In the morning, the performance begins with an in349
augural round dance, the mweli (as on pis. 58, 65, 82).
The mweli, is followed at about noon by the ceremonial
figure dance (kasawaga) (pi. 73).
All is done in full
dress and with great display, to the attentive observation
of the onlookers.
will follow.
But this is only a preparation for what
After midday, the real ceremonial begins.
The per¬
formers have now ritually to wash, dress, and ornament
themselves.
The visitors and the rest of the villagers
are in the meantime engaged in a distribution of food and
in feasting.
Early in the afternoon, platters of baked
yams, bananas, and coco-nut, and sometimes of fish as
well, are brought to the guests and distributed to each
community as mitalela valu (“eye of the village”—a
metaphor which I was unable to elucidate).
This is
usually an occasion for much merriment and some horseplay, the givers and receivers exchanging appropriate
jokes.
Then each group sets to work on its portion, sit¬
ting round the platter with backs turned to the people
from other village communities, as is required by good
manners.
To complete our account of food distributions: there
follows another sagali, in which the performers, now fully
dressed and adorned, give presents to their
(father’s sisters, and their daughters).
tabusia
This is a repay¬
ment for the beauty magic which the women have per¬
formed upon them, to the description of which we now
proceed.
Rehearsing of a “Kasawaga” Dance
The Crowd Assembled Outside the Village for Beauty Magic
The ceremonial washing and decoration of the dancers
is undertaken on this occasion by women of a special class,
namely those who stand to them in the relation of tabu.
We shall have to discuss the tabu and their place in the
social scheme more fully in the chapters which follow
(ch. xiii, sec. 65 see also ch. viii, sec. 2). In this place we
need only mention that they are the approved and suitable
partners for passing intrigues, for more stable liaisons or
for marriage (see also ch. iv, sec. 4).
It is their duty
now to prepare the men for the dance, to deck them out
with ornaments, with flowers and with paint, and to per¬
form the magic incidental to each stage of the proceed¬
ings.
In this, the ritual differs from the beauty magic in
the kula, where each man makes his own magic and
adorns himself.
It is, on the other hand, similar in every
respect to the beauty magic performed in the first preg¬
nancy ceremony (see above, ch. viii, sec. 2).
The ceremonial dressing must, as always, be preceded
by a ritual washing and cleansing, conducted to a running
accompaniment of appropriate spells.
The dancers and
their attendants have now assembled outside the village
in the grove, usually at a place not far from the waterhole (pi. 74).
While the boys wait, their tabula recite a
spell over some coco-nut fibre, with which the skin is to
be rubbed as with a sponge; and over some soft loaves
(usually of the wageva shrub), with which the skin will
be dried as with a towel.
This is, in free translation, a
kaykakaya (ablution) formula for the charming of the
coco-nut fibre:1
Polishing, polishing off,
Cleansing, cleansing off,
There is one piece of fibre,
My own, a keen fibre, a buoyant fibre,
One which is as the morning star,
Which is as the full moon.
I cleanse his chest, I improve his head,
I improve his chest, I cleanse his head,
They climb up a pole (to admire),
They bind a flattery-bond round his knees.
This formula needs hardly any comment.
It contains,
as with most magic, the affirmation of the desired effect.
It begins with a simple statement of the action of cleans¬
ing, and then extols the value of the coco-nut, comparing
it to the morning star and to the full moon.
The quality
thus charmed into the coco-nut fibre will, it must be re¬
membered, be later on transferred by friction to the skin
of the bather.
The idea of a light colour as an attribute
of beauty is clearly expressed.
The formula closes with
an exaggerated statement of the effect to be produced by
the magic.
It is a custom to remove a piece of decoration
from the body of a dancer or, in the case of people of
high rank, to tie a string round his leg or arm, in order
to express admiration.
This is done with the words
Agu tilewa’i, “my flattery-bond,” and has to be redeemed
by the admired dancer with a suitable present, which is
also called tilewa’i—flattery-gift.
1 For information as to the linguistic plan adopted in the translation of
this and other native texts, see ch. xviii, “The Power of Words in Magic,”
in my Argonauts of the fVestern Pacific.
The following formula is spoken over the leaves used
for drying the skin:—
I pull and pull, I pull hither and thither,
I pull my leaves of drying.
There is one kind of towel leaves,
The leaves of my companions;
Sere, parched leaves they are,
There is another kind of leaves, my towel leaves.
The leaves of me, of Ibo’umli,
They are keen buoyant flashing leaves.
Here again we find the usual affirmation, but the three
middle lines are very interesting, for they show what
might be called a typical case of magical relativity.
The
magic of the speaker, who in such cases always mentions
his or her own name, is extolled at the expense of the
magic of his or her companions.
This type of phrasing
is prevalent in magic applied in competitive activities.
The pulling of the leaves mentioned in the first line refers
to the act of breaking them from the tree, and is a typical
magical expression.
After the coco-nut fibre and the leaves have been
charmed, each man takes his sponge and towel from his
tabula and wraps it up in leaves, so that no magic virtue
shall evaporate, even during the short passage from the
spot where they are assembled to the water-hole, whither
the men presently repair, leaving the women behind.
Arrived there, the men remove all dress and ornament,
and begin to wash, scraping off any paint which still re¬
mains from the morning.
The coco-nut fibre is first un¬
wrapped from its covering, and with this they rub their
1 Compare, for instance, the formula referring to the speed of the canoe,
Argonauts of the IVestern Pacific, p. 130.
skin.
They rub carefully and earnestly and with a scru¬
pulous minuteness, so that no part of the skin shall remain
untouched.
The face and the chest are perhaps most
thoroughly scrubbed.
With the same meticulous atten¬
tion to detail, the skin is dried with the soft, spongy
leaves.
Then they return to their female magicians who
are awaiting them.
THE
OF
In the meantime, the women have been preparing
various cosmetic substances.
Each boy, before the wash¬
ing, has taken off his most precious ornaments, such as
shell-belt, armshells, and valuable necklaces, and left
them with his tabula; so now the toilet can begin.
First
comes the anointing with charmed coco-nut oil, always the
next stage after washing (I failed to obtain the magical
formula of coco-nut oil).
When this has been well
rubbed all over the skin, by the man himself and not by
the women, the latter proceed to stroke the skin with
a mother-of-pearl shell (kayeki or kaydobu) (pi. 75).
Slowly and gently each tabula presses the smooth shell
up and down over his cheeks, his arms and his chest, and
laterally across his forehead; reciting a formula, as she
does so, in a clear audible voice.
The words must always
be spoken towards the boy’s face which she is stroking.
Who makes the beauty magic?—
To heighten the beauty, to make it come out.
Who makes it on the slopes of Obukula?—
I, Tabalu, and my mate Kwaywaya.
We make the beauty magic.
I smooth out, I improve, I whiten!
Thy head I smooth out, I improve, I whiten!
Thy cheeks I smooth out, I improve, I whiten!
Thy nose I smooth out, I improve, I whiten!
Thy throat I smooth out, I improve, I whiten!
Thy neck I smooth out, I improve, I whiten!
Thy shoulders I smooth out, I improve, I whiten!
Thy breast I smooth out, I improve, I whiten!
Bright skin, bright; glowing skin, glowing.
The opening sentences of the formula again present a
typical pattern of Trobriand magic.
They express the
traditional filiation of the actual performer.
By reciting
them, the magician charms, not in his own name, but as
a representative, so to speak, of the original source of the
magic.
He—or in this case she—is even projected to the
spot from whence the magic camej in the present rites
on the slopes of Obukula, where the primeval grotto lies,
near the village of Laba’i.1
From this grotto, according
to tradition, the earliest clan-ancestors emerged.
There,
also, the culture hero Tudava was raised and lived with
his mother.
It is the centre of traditional magic, of
custom and of law.
The formula identifies the speaker
with two ancestors of the highest sub-clan, which takes
its name from one of them, Tabalu.
In the form given
in this charm, the names can be either male or female.
In practice, the masculine prefix Ado- or the feminine
prefix Bo- is usually added to indicate whether a man or
a woman is named.
Thus, the old chief of Kasana i, who
was still alive on my first visit to the Trobnands, was
called M’tabalu, and one of his nephews, Kwaywaya.
The feminine forms would be Botabalu and Bokwaywaya
1 For details of these legendary places and persons, see Myth in Primi¬
tive Psychology.
respectively.
The rest of the formula is typical of all
the longer spells and follows, step by step, the ritual
applications to the object charmed.
This is the longest
formula and the most circumstantial act of beauty magic.
After the body has been anointed and smoothed with
the pearl shell, the cosmetics are ceremonially applied.
The mouth is painted with crushed betel-nut, while the
following words are chanted:
Red paint, red paint thither.
Red paint, red paint hither.
One red paint of my companions,
It is sere, it is parched.
One red paint, my red paint
Of me, of Ibo’umli;
It is keen, it is buoyant, it is flashing:
My red paint.
This charm is similar in form to that of the wageva
leaves.
When the mouth has been painted red, and perhaps a
few lines in the same colour on the face, ornamental
spirals are painted on the cheeks and forehead with
sayaku (pi. 76), an aromatic black cosmetic, while the
following words are recited:
O black paint, O buoyant black paint!
O black paint, O decorative black paint!
O black paint, O comely black paint!
Glowing eyes, glowing, bright eyes, bright.
For this is my sayaku.
The ornamenting, the alluring black paint indeed.
Then the hair is teased out with a comb to the accom¬
paniment of this spell:
Who makes the beauty magic—
To heighten the beauty, to make it come out?
Who makes it on the slopes of Kituma?
I, Ibo’umli, make the beauty magic
To heighten the beauty, to make it come out.
I make it on the slopes of Kituma.
Keen is my comb, buoyant is my comb,
My comb is like the full moon,
My comb is like the morning star.
For this is my comb,
It will adorn me,
It will make me beloved indeed.
The name, Ibo’umli, occurring in this and one or two
of the previous formulae, is that of my informant.
The
place, Kituma, seems to be somewhere in the eastern archi¬
pelago, but my informant could not locate it exactly.
The toilet is now almost complete.
The dancers are
adorned with red flowers, aromatic herbs (vana), and
garlands of the butia> which always blooms at this season
(pi. 77).
Appropriate incantations are said, but I shall
not here cite them, for, although I obtained them, I can¬
not translate them satisfactorily.
Finally, and with no
adjuvant magic, such valuable ornaments as belts, armshells, necklaces, and last, but not least, the feather orna¬
ments for the head, are put on the dancers.
This last
part of the toilet is done by men (pi. 78).
THE
OF
AND
AT
The elaborate ritual preparation of the dancers gives
some indication of the tense emotional atmosphere which
is characteristic of these big festive assemblies. The whole
complex of dangerous passions, which, at the same time,
spring from and generate the spirit of emulation, is
wrought upon by such a culminating occasion for personal
display.
While charms are being said over the dancers in the
grove to give them added beauty, strength, and skill, two
other kinds of magic are being prepared in the village, one
of which is a measure of protection.
There is a deep
belief and a strong apprehension among the natives that
black magic is being used against the dancers by the ene¬
mies of the village.
Excellence in dancing is, indeed,
one of those dangerous accomplishments which arouse
great envy, and against which many an evil magician
directs his powers.
In fact, among the symptoms by
which the wizard murderer is identified on the corpse of
his victim, an important place is occupied by marks which
signify: “This man was killed for his excellence in
dancing.” 1
There is a special evil magic called kaygiauri, which is
practised against the dancers, and indeed against all the
bystanders except the sorcerer himself and his friends.
I was not able to find out any details about this magic,
how it is performed, or how it is supposed to act.
But
I have myself seen men preparing an antidote and making
the counter-magic over the dancers.
When the ritual
toilet had been completed, small parcels were produced,
containing magically treated wild ginger-root hermetically
wrapped up in leaves.
These were chewed by the magi¬
cian, who then spat over the skin of the dancer.
Next he
took some aromatic leaves (kwebila); over these he mut¬
tered a short formula, and then he put them into the armlets of the dancers.
The operation of these evil passions is not, in fact,
1 Cf. Crime and Custom, part ii, ch. ii, p. 89.
The Magic of Mother of Pearl
[Ch. XI, 4]
Magical Face Painting
[Ch. XI, 4; also ch. X, 3]
The Ritual Placing of the “Vana
wholly confined to the realm of idea and belief.
The
danger of a fight during the culminating day of a kayasa
is even now not quite excluded.
I was never present when
feeling ran high enough to develop into a brawl, but,
even so, I was strongly aware of a violence and ruthless¬
ness in the behaviour of the performers and of the crowd,
of a certain nervous mistrust and clinging together of each
group, which confirmed the direct statements of the na¬
tives and my general information as to the conduct of
such affairs in former times.
Then the natives would
come fully armed, with spears, wooden sword clubs,
throwing sticks, and shields;
each community would
stand in a group with every man on his guard, suspicious
of all strangers and on the look-out for possible trouble.
When interest in the performance was at its height, people
would push forward, the closer physical contact would
cause suspicion of sorcery, and anything might be the
signal for a fight.
The presence of women in the various
groups was another important source of danger, because
of sexual rivalry.
To the envy and jealousy and mutual mistrust must
be added an ardent desire for renown (butura).
This
finds full and independent expression in a further type of
magic, which, with that of beauty and the specific against
hostile sorcery, is launched into the exalted atmosphere
of the village.
This is the magic of uributu, “spreading
of renown” (uri, from “won ,” to strike, to flick, to spray;
butu} root of “renown”).
While the dancers are being
made ready under the trees of the village grove; while
a distribution of food is in progress on the central place,
the magician of glory, the to’uributu, proceeds in his own
house to manufacture fame for his community.
He is the
same man who, on the first day of the festivities, a month
ago, has performed the important magic of the conchshells and the buried food.
In the morning he has also
prepared the scene of the dances by ritual sweeping of the
baku (central place) with a charmed broom.
his most important performance.
Now comes
On a large mat, folded
over so that it encloses them, he places a drum, a conchshell, and a few pieces of reed (dadam).
Into the open
mouth of this improvised magic bag he then chants his
spells.
obtain.
The formula unfortunately I was not able to
His task is completed as the dancers are ready, fully
dressed and waiting to start (pi. 79) the lapula or final
dance. He gives one of the drummers the magic drum,
and another man takes the charmed conch-shell.
The dancers, the singers, and the drummers now put
themselves into position, ready for the signal.
This is
given by the magician of glory and one or two assistants.
They run from the village street into the central place
with the magic reed in their hands. Each of them must
have both his hands upon the reed, which is pointing
towards the ground.
They strike the ground at intervals
with the reed, while they utter a high-pitched scream
(igovasi).
Arrived at the opposite end of the place, they
turn about and throw the reed into the air.
The man
who catches the reed scores a point in this contest for
renown, and will be spoken of all over the district when
the feast is gossiped about and its heroes mentioned.
Then the men of the reed utter another very loud cry
and this gives the signal for the drummers to beat, for
the conch-shells to blow, and for the dancers to begin their
final performance.
THE
We now pass to the most important system of magic
connected with erotic life in the Trobriands, the magic
of love.
While the magic of beauty is always associated
with ceremonial events, such as the kula (ceremonial ex¬
change), first pregnancy celebrations, a kayasa (period of
competitive activity), or an usigola, the magic of love
is performed whenever occasion arises.
While the magic
of beauty, again, is always done openly and in public, that
of love is a private matter and carried out on the indi¬
vidual’s own initiative.
This, of course, does not mean
that there is anything illicit or clandestine about the magic
of love.
People who possess it boast about it, and talk
about having put it in operation.
Nor, from the nature
of the rites, would it be possible to conceal it completely
from its object.
The magic of love becomes illicit only
in so far as the love itself is illicit} as, for instance, when
it is directed towards a chief’s wife, or towards some other
tabooed person.
It has been mentioned that this magic belongs to a
system.
A system of magic in the Trobriands is a series
of spells, which accompany some chain of linked activities
and are performed in a fixed order following the develop361
ment of the chain.
In economic pursuits such as garden¬
ing, fishing, the construction of a canoe, or a kula expe¬
dition, or, again, in the magic of beauty just described,
the rites accompany each successive stage of the enterprise,
which naturally proceeds in a definite order.
But there are other spheres of magic where the system
possesses a slightly different character.
For instance,
sorcery is believed to be the real cause of disease.
In¬
deed, black magic must be effective and finally fatal,
;provided that it is properly carried out with due observ¬
ance of all conditions, and 'provided that it is not met by
a stronger counter-magic.
The sorcerer opens the attack,
the victim defends himself by securing counter-magic, and
by making use of every factor which could counteract the
full efficiency of black magic.
Even if the sorcerer is
successful, or partially so, the resultant illness does not
develop along fixed lines'as does the growth of a garden.
Hence this system cannot follow a fixed sequence of
events.
Instead, a system of black magic consists of a
succession of spells and rites which gradually increase in
strength.
When the sorcerer is successful, the increasing
strength of his spells produces the more rapid decline of
his victim until death supervenes.
If the sorcerer is being
thwarted, he launches increasingly strong formulse in
order to get at his victim through the barrier of precau¬
tions, adverse conditions, and counter-magic with which
the latter has protected himself.
Let us examine black magic, not from the native, but
from the ethnographer s point of view.
A sorcerer either
is paid to remove a victim or does so from personal mo362
fives. It may happen, by a mere coincidence, that the
victim falls more or less seriously ill within a few weeks
of the initial operations. As black magic is often adver¬
tised and always suspected, the illness is put down to its
influence. If it be known that a powerful sorcerer, in the
pay of a chief, is at work, suggestion may have a serious
effect on the victim. It does not follow that he gives in
utterly and dies, but I suspect that this occasionally hap¬
pens.1 As a rule, however, if pressed hard, the victim
will mobilize all the forces of defence. He will put
counter-magic in operation; • set armed watches at night
around him; move away to another place, change his diet,
and observe all the taboos and other conditions of recov¬
ery. Thus we have the interplay of two forces in the
imagination of the patient, corresponding to the inter¬
play of the two real forces in his organism: resistance
and disease. The progress of the system of magic, ac¬
companied by the progress of the system of counter-magic,
proceed side by side with the struggle between the or¬
ganism and the invading forces of bacteria or malignant
changes. Once the sorcerer has determined on black
magic, or has received payment for it, he has to go
through the whole repertory from the initial formula to
1 I have no well-attested instance in my notes, but several cases of rapid
wasting disease have appeared to me to belong to this category. Exam¬
ples of people dying from sheer conviction that a broken taboo has a
lethal influence, or that black magic, too powerful to be counteracted, has
been set in motion against them, are numerous in ethnographic literature.
The argument in the text does not rest on the assumption, however, that
what might be called psychological death from sorcery is inevitable. It
rests rather on the principle which we can regard as established by mod¬
ern psycho-therapy that a conviction of good and bad influences working
upon the patient’s health is a most powerful element in the treatment
Cf. P. Janet, Les Medications Psychologiqties, 1920.
the final pointing of the bone—even if he has to admit
failure in the end.
An unwittingly broken taboo is per¬
haps an important sorcerer’s best excuse for unsuccess; but
bad luck in the final application of charmed substances
and powerful counter-magic also serve to account for the
impotence of his magic.
After such failure, the sorcerer
bides his time and awaits a suitable opportunity—such,
for instance, as his victim actually falling ill.
sets to work again.
Then he
For though the natives believe that
real illness (siiami) can be produced only by magic, they
are perfectly well aware that an indisposition (katoulo)
which may be natural forms an excellent soil for the
operations of sorcery.
It was necessary to enlarge on the general character
of magical systems, and on the distinction between the
system which follows the naturally determined progress
of activity or enterprise, on the one hand, and the system
which follows a course determined by the chance play
of unknown factors on the other, in order to lay bare the
essential character of love magic.
This type also deals
with a configuration of chances and elements which do
not follow a definite natural course.
Here also the belief
is very strong that love magic, properly executed and not
counteracted, is infallible.
The nanola (mind and emo¬
tional centre) of man or woman cannot resist the com¬
plete consecutive series of rites and spellsj even if it were
no more than strongly affected by the initial steps, it must
succumb to the cumulative ritual—that is if the magic
be not magically counteracted.
For here also there are
causes which account for failure 3 the performer may not
have the words accurately or he may have broken a con¬
ditional taboo 5 or a counter-magic may frustrate his almost
successful attempts.
As in all supernatural control of
chance, magical infallibility is absolute only under abso¬
lutely perfect conditions 5 that is to say, it is never at- tained in practice, though it may be claimed in theory.
In following the practice of love magic through its
successive stages, we must have in mind the setting of a
Trobriand love story, in ordinary village life and among
the customary forms of communication between the sexes.
Although girls are said to practise this magic, it is more
usual for the man to take the initiative.
The story begins
in the ordinary way: a boy is fascinated by a girl.
If
there be no response and he does not win her favours im¬
mediately, he resorts to the most potent way of courting
her, that is by magic.
As in ordinary beauty magic, he must first wash or
bathe in the sea.
Thus he makes himself handsome and
attractive 3 in the same rite he also charms a responsive
affection into the loved one’s heart.
hero to live near the sea.
Let us suppose our
On his wTay to the shore, he
gathers in the bush some of the soft spongy leaves of the
wageva, silasila, or -ponatile shrubs, and also some leaves
from a tree with a specially smooth and clean bark—
preferably from the reyava and gatumwaliia.
He puts
the whole bundle into some large leaf and chants the
special washing formula over it.
This corresponds to
analogous spells in the kula beauty magic and in the
beauty magic described in the previous sections.
One of the kaykakaya spells of love magic, which I
obtained, may be freely rendered thus:
The Kaykakaya Spell
Leaves of dirt and leaves of cleansing,
Leaves of dirt and leaves of cleansing,
Smooth as the bark of the reyava tree
As the tail of the opossum.
My face shines in beauty;
I cleanse it with leaves;
My face, I cleanse it with leaves,
My eyebrows, I cleanse them with leaves.
And so on.
The boy then has to name various parts of the head
and of the body, adding after each the word ayolise, which
has been translated here: “I cleanse with leaves.”
These
were the parts named by the informant who gave me the
charm: head, face, eyebrows, nose, cheek, chin, jaws,
throat, shoulders, larynx, breasts, flanks, armpits, but¬
tocks, thighs, knees, calves, and feet.
proceeds :
The formula then
Beautiful will my face remain,
Flashing will my face remain,
Buoyant will my face remain!
No more it is my face,
My face is as the full moon.
No more it is my face,
My face is as the round moon.
I pierce through,
As the creamy shoot of the areca leaf,
I come out,
As a bud of the white lily.
Then the charmed leaves are carefully wrapped up,
lest the magic virtue should evaporate (,kayawa), and the
boy washes himself in water.
When he is thoroughly
cleansed, the wrapping is opened, and the skin rubbed
all over and dried with the charmed leaves.
At this point
the rite takes on its specific character as part of a system
of love magic j for the leaves that have been thus used
are thrown into the sea, with the words: “Kirisana akaykakaya} kula kworisaki mat ana . . .” (here the girl’s per¬
sonal name is mentioned).
The word kirisana, also
known in the form kirisala or karisala, signifies the influ¬
ence which a dream induced by magic may exercise over
the seat of the emotions—the heart, as we would say—
the belly, as the natives put it.1
The word might be
rendered: “The spell or the influence of a magical act
in inducing a dream.”
The verbal form is korisaki with
the active suffix -ki.
The translation of the sentence
would, therefore, run as follows: “Dream-spell of my
kaykakaya charm, go and effectively influence the eye of
So-and-so.”
Thus the rite has a twofold effect: it makes a man
beautiful, as does all washing magic, and it carries sweet
dreams about him into the mind of the girl.
As the
natives put it, referring to the ritual casting of the herbs
into the sea: “As the leaves will be tossed by the waves,
and as they move with the sea up and down, so the inside
of the girl will heave.”
What follows depends, as in sorcery, upon the effect
of what has already been accomplished.
If the loved one
surrenders easily, perhaps one more formula will be re¬
cited, to attach her affections the more securely.
1 Cf. below, ch. xii, sec. i.
But if
the washing magic fails completely, another attack is made
on the beleaguered heart by means of a stronger magic
called the kasina.
the mouth.
This has to be administered through
A piece of food or betel-nut—or, to-day,
some tobacco—is charmed and given to the girl.
The
washing magic has already made her more interested in
her suitor and, though she is not yet prepared to yield,
she will probably ask for some such small gift.
In any
case, she will not refuse such an offering, even though
she suspects that it is given with an ulterior motive.
The Kasina Spell
My flashing decoration, my white skin!
I shall take the faces of my companions and rivals;
I shall make them be cast off.
I shall take my face, the face of me (personal name),
And I shall get a flattery-bond for it
For my beautiful full-moon face.
The simile in the last line would not perhaps send a
thrill to the heart of a white girl, but the full moon, for
the Trobriander, is a symbol of colour and of roundness
in a more emotionally appealing sense than it is with us.
The “flattery-bond” (tilewa’i) has already been explained
above (sec. 3).
When the girl has eaten this little douceuv, the magic
enters into her inside and moves her mind.
There is a
fair chance already that her affections are favourably
inclined, but a still more potent magic remains.
The first
attack, as we saw, was through the ethereal medium of
dreams; the second, by the very material way of eating;
there remain the two senses of touch and smell.
are considered the most susceptible in love magic.
These
The next rite, therefore, centres round an aromatic
herb called kwoyawagay which grows only in the eastern
islands and has to be traded mainly from Kitava.
This
herb is put into a receptacle with coco-nut oil, and the
following spell is chanted over it:
The Kwoyawaga Spell
Spread out, fold up,
Spread out, fold up,
I cut off, I cut, I cut.
A bait for a bird, for a small fish-hawk,
Uve, uvegu-guyo, o!
My kayro’i'iva love charm remains,
My kayro’i'iva love charm weeps,
My kayro’i'iva love charm pulls,
My kayro’i'iva love charm spills over.
Press down, press upon thy bed;
Smooth out, smooth your pillow-mat;
Enter my house and tread upon my floor.
Tease out and tear out my hair;
Drink my blood and take hold of my penis;
Apicem penis suge, for my guts are moved.
This formula is much more obscure than the previous
ones.
The first sentence, “spread out, fold up,” may
refer, as my informants told me, to the mat on which a
boy and girl recline in amorous embrace.
The cutting, by
analogy with similar formulse, is of the plants to be used
in the magic.
In the next phrase, the magic is likened
to a bait for a bird and the girl to a fish-hawk which
hovers over the trap.
One sentence I was unable to
translate even approximately, and it is therefore given in
native.
What follows is less cryptic.
Kayro’iwa is the
name of one of the systems of love magic, with which
we shall become more intimately acquainted in connection
with the native myth of incest (ch. xiv).
The last part
is typical of the more passionate forms of love magic.
I have obtained several formulas with similar endings.
I may add that, for every formula which I was able
to write down, to check after a few weeks’ interval, to get
a commentary upon, and to translate into anything like
sense, I had to reject several as spurious, fragmentary
or not understood by the natives.
I was always able to
distinguish the genuine archaic formulas from the cor¬
rupt, by the method of checking and re-checking them
with my original informant, after having allowed an
interval of time to elapse after each repetition.
To return to the magic of the kwoyawaga herbs, this
charmed and prepared aromatic substance can only be
used at close quarters.
An even more intimate approach
to the desired girl has to be effected than is possible with
the piece of betel-nut or tobacco of the previous ritual.
For some of the aromatic oil must be smeared upon her
body, or poured on to her face, or, best of all, applied
to her breasts.
Thus close physical contact is needed, and
for this, opportunities are given in games, in dances, in
tribal festivities, and in the rhythmic round called the
karibom.
Only when a boy is very clumsy or shy, or has
no opportunity for intimate approach, will he put the
oil on a piece of cigarette paper (or, in olden days, on a
flower), so that the smoke or scent may enter her nostrils.
There remains still one rite—that of the all-powerful
sulumwoya, the mint plant, which is the symbol
of
charm and seduction, the main instrument of attraction in
the kula (ceremonial exchange), the herb which plays the
central part in the myth of the origins of love, and which
figures also in the culminating act of love magic.
This
ritual would still be performed, even if the magic had
been successful at an earlier stage.
For sulumwoya gives
a full and undivided sway over the loved one’s heart.
Boge bipayki kumaydonay magila yakiday “Already she
will refuse all others; her desire is only for us.”
This
is the formula of the sulumwoya magic in the kayro’iwa
system.
Sulumwoya Spell
O, her sensual excitement!
O, her erotic swoon!
O, desire, O feminine swoon!
My clasping, thy clasping, kindle our erotic swooning!
My embraces, thy embraces, kindle our erotic swooning!
My copulation, thy copulation, kindle our erotic swooning!
The same complicated phrasing is repeated with a
number of words inserted instead of clasping, embracing
and so forth.
The words are: horizontal motion (bila-
bala)y horizontal repose
(bilamapu), erotic scratching
(kimali), erotic biting (kayalu), nose rubbing (vayaulo),
and eyelash biting (mitakuku)y lousing {kopokutu), rub¬
bing each other’s lips (kawidova).
Then come the fol¬
lowing sentences:
My going first, thy following, kindle our erotic swooning,
My waiting, thy waiting, kindle our erotic swooning.
and finally:
Thou goest my way, crying for me,
Thou enterest my house, smiling at me.
The house is shaken with joy, as thou treadest my floor.
Tease and tear out my hair,
Drink my blood,
So that my feelings are glad.
This is a long formula—the longer since, as in all
Trobriand magical spells, the middle part, the litany, is
always repeated over and over again, and not necessarily
in the same order.
It is chanted over a mint plant boiled
in coco-nut oil.
If the magic is practised on someone
whose love has already been captured, there is no difficulty
in spilling the scented and charmed oil over her, or
anointing her with it.
If she is not yet subdued, the
problem remains of entering her hut at night, and spill¬
ing some of it below her nostrils, so that she may dream
of the magic maker.
irresistible.
But if this is achieved the spell is
Less certain methods are to smear the oil over her
hands, or bring some of it near to her face; or to take a
sweet-smelling sprig of herbs, dip it in the oil and flick
it under her nose.
These three methods obviously make
her cognizant that love magic is being employed; and this
produces the desired effect—psychologically at least, if
not magically!
As an additional charm, the same formula may be re¬
cited over the long spine of a fish called umlaybasi, a prick
from which inflicts a lasting and smarting pain.
Holding
it in the hollow of his hand, the boy brings his lips close
to his hand and chants the spell into it, after which the
spine may be put into the stopper of the coco-nut bottle
in which the oil is being kept.
Or else, holding it in the
hollow of his hand, the boy may stab the girl with his
finger in the ribs or thereabout; or, during the karibom,
he may make one of those even more intimate insertions
already mentioned (ch. ix, sec. 3).
THE
A direct and consecutive statement of a complex and
somewhat chaotic subject such as that of love magic
inevitably suggests more precision and system than ac¬
tually exists, especially when the component parts hang
together, at least in theory.
And it is well to realize that
actual proceedings are never as complete and well de¬
fined as might appear from native statements.
A certain amount of complication is introduced by the
fact that there are a number of different systems.
most famous one is that of Kayro’iwa.
The
But the systems
of Kvooygapani and Libomatu, from the islands
of
Vakuta and Kayleula respectively, are also prominent.
These systems, being perhaps the most widely known
and practised, have now become mixed up and few natives
have a complete set of formulas belonging to the same
system.
As a matter of fact, only a few of my informants,
even among those who boasted of having a powerful set
of formulas, could go through a full set satisfactorily.
Each knew two or three or only one spell.
I may add
that perhaps no native in the Trobriands would be able
to judge magical texts as well as myself.
For no human
memory is a match for a written comparative collection.
Towards the end of my field-work, I found little diffi¬
culty in deciding whether a spell recited to me was genuine
or corrupt; and, in the latter case, whether it was delib¬
erate deception, self-deception, or deception on the part
of my informant’s predecessor, or just lack of memory.
What matters to us is that few natives are in posses¬
sion of a full system in an unadulterated form.
A youth
who knows his spell or two—sometimes only a frag¬
ment—will as a rule genuinely believe that there is a
great
deal
of
virtue
strengthens his belief.
in
it;
very
often
experience
He will recite his fragment or his
full charm over the kaykakaya leaves, and if unsuccess¬
ful he will try his formula over the other herbs.
Each rite has a certain positive effect on him and usually
also on his sweetheart.
The washing magic gives him
the conviction of increased strength and power to attract,
an attitude very favourable to his enterprise.
The same
magic makes him hope that the girl has dreamed of him,
and that she is ready to receive his advances.
He ap¬
proaches her with confidence, and jokes with her without
embarrassment.
The other rites afford a still more material help in
love-making.
All of them imply a direct contact; a gift,
an erotic touch, the wafting of some scent.
Thus not only
does he believe in his magical powers, but she also is
made aware that he is working on her heart.
And she
also is susceptible to the influence of belief and tradition.
If he is hopelessly repulsive to her, this need not shatter
her belief in love magic.
She concludes that his rites are
spurious and his formulas badly recited.
But if he has
the least attraction for her, it is easy to see how magic will
do its work.
These conclusions are based on observation of native
behaviour, on statements of natives, and on the actual
working of love magic in cases analysed to me by my
friends as they were proceeding.
The deep conviction of the natives in the virtue of love
magic and their belief that it is the only means of wooing,
have already been mentioned.
All a man’s hopes of suc¬
cess, his boasting and his anticipations are based on con¬
fidence in his magical equipment, exactly as all failure is
attributed to lack or impotence in this respect.
I have
already several times alluded to Gomaya: vain, arrogant,
and wilful, yet with remarkable personality.
He always
used to vaunt his success with women, and invariably in
terms of magic.
He would say: “I am ugly, my face is
not good-looking.
But I have magic, and therefore all
women like me.”
He would then boast of his intrigues
with Ilamweria, of the attachment that his cross-cousins
had for him, and of other amorous successes, some of
which have already been mentioned in this volume.
My
other informants were one and all agreed in their convic¬
tion of the potency of love magic.
To a direct question
I would always receive the same answer: “If one man is
good-looking, a good dancer, and a good singer, and he
has no magic; while the other man is ugly, lame, and
dark-skinned, but has good magic; the first will be re¬
jected, the second will be loved by women.”
This, of course, is exaggeration for the sake of em¬
phasis, typical of a Melanesian’s way of presenting mat¬
ters.
All natives know the magic, yet not all by any
means have the same success.
Met by such an argument,
the natives will say that the man who has success has it
because his magic is “keen and strong.”
And here the
fiction of native belief comes nearer to reality.
A man of
intelligence, of strong will, personality, and tempera¬
ment, will have greater success with women than a beauti¬
ful but soulless dullard—in Melanesia as in Europe.
A
man who is convinced that he is going the right way to
work 5 a man who has the energy to find out who has the
best magic and the industry to acquire and learn it, such
a man will be good at love-making as well as at magic.
The native belief thus expresses some truth, though it is
psychological rather than physical or occult, and refers to
results rather than to mechanism.
Gomaya was a case in point.
The five sons of To’uluwa
and Kadamwasila were all pleasant and clever, attractive
and enterprising, and were all renowned for their love
magic.
As a matter of fact, the first and last of the
formulas here given I received from Yobukwa’u who,
knowing only two out of the four charms, yet achieved
an incestuous love-affair with his father’s youngest wife,
several adulteries, and two engagements one after the
other.
All these affairs were attributed to love magic3
as was the case with Kalogusa, his younger brother, who
subdued Yobukwa’u’s fiancee, Isepuna.
Another of the
five brothers, Gilayviyaka, with whose intrigues too we
are already acquainted, was also reputed to be an expert
at love magic.
Many more examples could be adduced,
but it is better to keep to the more notorious cases.
Bagido’u, the nephew and heir-apparent of the prin¬
cipal chief, an extremely intelligent and pleasant infor¬
mant, was ill of some internal wasting sickness, probably
tuberculosis.
We have already heard of his domestic
mishaps, the defection of his handsome wife, who left him
in order to join her late sister’s husband, Manimuwa, a
young, healthy and handsome man of Wakayse (see ch.
vi, sec. i).
She often visited her sister, and during the
latter’s last illness she stayed for a long time with her
brother-in-law.
The issue was obvious: Manimuwa and
Dakiya formed an attachment and entered upon an illicit
intrigue, which ended in her joining him.
blamed for all the trouble.
Magic was
Even Bagido’u himself, the
deserted husband, would say that she was a good woman,
but that this bad man had first performed evil magic to
estrange her from her husband, and afterwards love magic
to seduce her.
Dakiya, in fact, was quoted as the classical
instance of the power of magic.
“Magic made the mind
of Dakiya; Manimuwa only remains in her mind.”
The
comic side of this otherwise sad story was that Bagido’u
had the reputation of being the greatest expert in the
magic of love.
Of course, my informants were ready
with explanations of the theoretical conundrums involved.
Finally to return once more to a story which is a case
in point: the tragedy of Namwana Guya’u’s expulsion
from the village by the kinsmen of Mitakata (see ch. i,
sec. 2).
On my return after more than a year’s absence
from the Trobriands, I met Namwana Guya’u in one of
the southern villages.
implacable as ever.
His hatred of Mitakata was as
When I asked him what had hap¬
pened to his enemy, he told me that the wife of Mitakata,
Orayayse, had rejected him (see pi. 25).
She was, as a
matter of fact, the first cousin of her husband’s enemy,
and I knew that her husband had sent her away for
political reasons.
But Namwana Guya’u hinted that he
had estranged her feelings from her husband by magic.
Then he enlarged on the bad habits of his enemy.
“He
tries to get hold of girls and they refuse him” } yet he
had to inform me that Mitakata had married Ge’umwala,
a young and pretty girl.
“Boge, ivakome minana; magila
imasisi deli; ndtage biva’i, i-payki—matauna ib?a”
“Al¬
ready he gave magic to her to eat} her desire to sleep
together} but to marry she refused—he took her by
force.”
Here then the value of the success was actually
minimized by its attribution to love magic} and the con¬
sent to marriage, which cannot be won by any such im¬
personal means, was denied to his enemy by Namwana
Guya’u!
In the Trobriands all positive magic has a negative
counterpart, in belief and theory at least, if not always
in reality.
The magic of health and disease is the clearest
example, for, against every rite and spell which produces
disease, there is a counter-magic which cures it.
The posi¬
tive magic of success, which accompanies each economic
enterprise, always implies the existence of a negative pre¬
ventive rite, which accounts for the possibility of failure in
positive magic.
So it is not surprising to find that love-charms have to
contend with a magic which acts in the opposite direction.
This is the magic of estrangement and oblivion, a depart¬
ment of black magic, generically called bulubwalata,
though in its narrower meaning this term designates just
this magic.
The root bulu on which the word is built is
also the formative element “pig” (bulukwa).
Whether
this means that the prototype of all this magic con¬
sists of the rites which aim at the dispersion of pigs
by malicious magic, I was unable to decide.
The fact
is, however, that this magic is used for sending away
pigs into the bush as well as for estranging wives and
sweethearts.
Whenever a man has reasons for hating a girl or, even
more often, her paramour or her husband, he will practise
this magic.
It acts upon her mind, and turns away her
affections from her husband or lover.
She leaves his
house, leaves her village, and wanders away.
The in¬
formant who gave me the following spells told me that
when the magic is administered in a mild form, the girl
will leave her husband or lover, but return to her own
village and her own people; but if it is given in a large
quantity, and properly, with minute observation of ac¬
curacy in spell and rite and in the taboos, she will run
away to the bush, lose her road, and maybe disappear for
ever.
In this, as in other types of magic, the man might
recite the initial spell only in order to produce a partial
effect, that is to alienate the girl’s feelings from her sweet¬
heart or husband.
The following formula has to be said over a piece of
food, or some tobacco, or some betel-nut, which is then
given to the victim.
It is called kabisilova (literally
“causing to reject”), and may be freely translated as
follows:
His name be extinguished, his name be rejected;
Extinguished at sunset, rejected at sunrise;
Rejected at sunset, extinguished at sunrise.
A bird is on the baku,
A bird which is dainty about its food.
I make it rejected!
His mint-magic, I make it rejected.
His kayro’iwa magic, I make it rejected.
His libomatu magic
His copulation magic
His horizontal magic
His horizontal movement
His answering movement
His love dalliance
His erotic scratching
His caresses of love
His love embraces
His bodily embracing
My kabisilova spell,
It worms its way within you,
The way of the earth heap in the bush gapes open,
The way of the refuse heap in the village is closed.
In the opening lines there is a play upon two words,
both of which contain the root of the verbs “to extinguish”
and “to reject.”
The spell begins, therefore, with an
anticipation of its primary effect.
It goes on to invoke
oblivion openly and in detail: all caresses are to be for¬
gotten.
Two lines follow to give power to the spell,
that it may insinuate itself into the mind of the girl,
and worm its way into all her thoughts.
Finally the
jungle is opened to the girl and the way to the village
closed.
The following spell, obtained from the same infor¬
mant, was said to be a stronger instalment of this magic.
It is administered in the same way, or else it is said over
some leaves and coco-nut husk, which are then burnt
above a fire, so that the evil-smelling smoke may enter
the nostrils of the girl to be bewitched.
it runs:
Freely translated
Woman, woman repelled,
Man, man repelled,
Woman, woman refusing,
Man, man refusing.
She is repelled, she refuses.
Thy man, thy sweetheart, startles and frightens you,
Swear at him, by his sister;
Tell him, “Eat thy filth.”
Thy road is behind the houses
His face disappears.
The way of the earth heap in the bush gapes open,
The way of the refuse heap in the village is closed.
His face disappears;
His face vanishes;
H is face gets out of the way;
His face becomes like that of a wood-spirit;
His face becomes as that of the ogre Dokonikan.
There falls, forsooth, a veil over thy eyes
The evil magic comes,
It covers completely the pupils of the eyes.
His mint-magic is as nought,
His love-magic is as nought,
His erotic scratchings are as nought,
H is love caresses are as nought,
His copulations are as nought,
His horizontal movement is as nought,
His movement in response is as nought,
His bodily relaxing is as nought.
The first period of the spell is then repeated up to
the words “she is repelled, she refuses,” and it then con¬
cludes:
Thy sun is westering, thy sun goes down.
Thy sun is westering, thy sun shines aslant
She is cut off, she goes far away,
She goes far away, she is cut off.
The only point in this formula which may need ex¬
planation is the sentence inviting the girl to swear by his
sister at her husband.
Such abuse is one of the deadliest
offences, and especially so between husband and wife.
We shall speak about it in chapter xiii.
Although the magic of the bulubwalata is negative in
regard to love magic, yet the evil done by it cannot be
undone by love formulae.
But if a man, in passing anger,
should have done great injury to a home by practising
this evil magic, there is, within its own system, a possible
remedy in the “fetching back” formula, the katuyumayamila (katuyumali—an archaic form of ka’imali, the ordi¬
nary form for “return, give back”).
This formula has to
be spoken in the open, owadola wala (“just in the
mouth”), as the natives say.
But the magician has to
recite it towards the various points of the compass suc¬
cessively, so that the magical virtue may reach the woman
wherever she may be wandering in the bush.
This
formula also begins by a play on words containing the
formative roots of the verbs “to make up” and “to at¬
tract.” Then follows:—
May my bulub'walata be blunt!
May my fetching magic be keen!
I am fetching back!
From the north-eastern quarter, I am fetching back;
From the south-eastern quarter, I am fetching back;
From the jungle of Ulawola, I am fetching back;
From the jungle of Tepila, I am fetching back;
The one who is like a woodsprite, I am fetching back;
From the stone heaps, I am fetching back;
From the boundary stone walls, I am fetching back;
From the fern thickets, I am fetching back;
With the smell of mint magic, I am fetching back;
I am fetching back thy mind, O woman!
Come back to us-thy-mother.
Come back to us-thy-father.
Tear open the house,
Tease and tear off my hair,
Tread on my floor,
And lie on my bed,
Come and pass over the threshold,
Come and remain at thy dung-heap,
Let us continue to dwell together,
Within our house.
Here the intention of the opening sentences is clear,
the evil magic is to be impotent, the good magic effective.
The Last Touch to the Dancers’ Toilet
Ready for the Final Dance
The truant is called back from the several points of the
compass and from the two parts of the jungle (Ulawola
and Tepila), one in the North and the other in the
South, which, surrounded by marshes (dumia), are per¬
haps the most inaccessible spots in the main island of the
Trobriands, and are regarded as the home of the bush pig.
The last part, as the reader has probably noticed, is built
on the same pattern as the formula of the love magic.
The compound words “us-thy-mother,” “us-thy-father”
are constructed with the inclusive dual possessive ma.
Thus by the magical virtue of this charm the man and
woman should not only be as husband and wife should be
to one another in the conjugal house, but as the father
and mother in the parental home also.
This formula is said to be very powerful, and to have
restored married happiness to scores of broken households.
With the pious hope that this is true we may conclude
the present chapter.
Chapter 12
So far we have studied the psychology of sex as it is
embodied in stereotyped behaviour} that is, in customs,
institutions, and in magic.
In short, in order to gauge
his attitude towards sex, we have studied how a Trobriander acts.
Now we must turn to such manifestations
of sexual ideas and feelings as are to be found in dreams,
day-dreams, and folk-tales j that is, in his free and set
fantasies about the past, about the future, about distant
countries, and above all about his life in the next world.
This chapter will be simply a record of collected data,
but even such records are inevitably made with certain
problems in view and are influenced by the mental atti¬
tude of the recorder.
Some academic pedants are apt to
contemn any signs of a wider knowledge or of intelligence
on the part of an observer of fact.
Theory should be
eliminated from field-work, so they say} but to my mind
this is mere intellectual hypocrisy, under the cloak of
purism.
The observations which I have made were not
recorded by some mechanical device or apparatus, but
were made with my own eyes and ears, and controlled
by my own brain.
The trick of relevant observation con¬
sists, in fact, in this very control.
It is quite inevitable
that my field-work should have been affected by my ideas,
interests, and even prejudices.
The honest way is to
state them so that they may be more easily detected and,
if it appears necessary, discounted and eliminated.
The
other way is to conceal them as skilfully as possible.
The observations to be recorded in this chapter were
mostly done before
stimulated.
my
psycho-analytic interest was
In my earlier work, I looked upon folk-lore
as a direct expression of social and cultural conditions.
When I found a certain motive, such as that of incest or
breach of exogamy, in folk-lore, I felt that it was puz¬
zling, but I did not see that it was significant.
I treated
it as an exception which confirms the rule, rather than as
a clue to further inquiry into typical social taboos and
repressions.
I paid little attention to the investigation of
dreams, of day-dreams, and of free fantasies.
It did
not take me long to see that dreams did not play the part
among the Trobrianders ascribed to them by Tylor and
others, and after that I did not trouble much more about
them.
Later only, stimulated by some literature sent to me by
Dr. C. G. Seligman and by his advice, did I begin to test
Freud’s theory of dreams as the expression of “repressed”
wishes and of the “unconscious,” as the ti(?gutivB of
acknowledged and official principle and morality.
In
doing this, I came upon important correlations between
folk-lore and fancy on the one hand, and social organiza¬
tion on the other; and was able to discover certain under¬
currents of desire and inclination running counter to the
established order of ideas and sentiments, which appear,
on the surface, insignificant and capricious, but which are
in reality of great sociological importance.1 That in the
course of my inquiry I had to reject far more of psycho¬
analytic doctrine than I could accept does not in any way
diminish my obligation j and my results showed beyond
all doubt how even a theory which has, in the light of
investigation, to be partly rejected can stimulate and
inspire.
The source of illicit feelings and inclinations is to be
found in the social taboos of a community. And the
failure, indeed the explicit disinclination, of psycho¬
analysts to take social organization seriously, stultifies
almost completely their own application of their doctrine
to anthropology.2
Though no reference will be made to these points in
what follows, it was fairer to indicate them at the start,
as they have played some part in the discovery and a con¬
siderable part in the presentation of the material given in
this and in the following chapters.
i
Spontaneous dreams are not of any great importance
in the life of the Trobrianders. On the whole the natives
appear to dream but seldom, have little interest in their
dreams, and do not often tell their experiences on waking
or refer to dreams in order to explain a belief or justify
1 Part of my results I have published in the two books on Crime and
Custom and Sex and Repression.
2 The reader will find this argument substantiated in my Sex and Re¬
pression.
a line of conduct.
No prophetic meaning is ascribed to
ordinary dreams, nor is there any system or code for their
symbolic interpretation.
Our interest is mainly in sexual and erotic dreams; but,
in order to understand these, it is necessary to form some
idea of the native’s attitude to dreams in general.
And
at the outset it must be understood that by “ordinary” or
“free” dreams, I mean spontaneous visions arising in
sleep, in response to physiological stimuli, to moods and
emotional experiences, to memories of the day and of the
past.
Such is the material of the dreams which come to
every human being, and they play, as I have said, a small
part in Trobriand culture, and are apparently rare and
easily forgotten.
Quite another class of dreams are those which are
prescribed and defined by custom.
These are expected
of certain people by virtue of their position or of some
task that they have undertaken, as a consequence of magic
which they have performed, or which has been performed
upon them, or of the influence of spiritual beings.
Such
stereotyped or standardized dreams are expected, hoped
for, and awaited; and this might easily account for the
frequency of their occurrence and for the ease with which
they are remembered.
It should be noted that the distinction between free
and standardized dreams is not made in native termi¬
nology nor even formulated in native doctrine.
But as
will presently be seen, it is embodied in behaviour and
in the general attitude towards dreams.
In standardized dreams, a prominent part is played by
visions of departed spirits.
They appear to people in
sleep under appropriate circumstances and at certain
seasons.
This is in fact one of the chief ways in which
they manifest their existence to the living.
But not all
dreams about the departed are regarded as true.
The
appearance may be either a sasopa (lie, illusion) or a real
baloma (spirit).
Real spirits always come with a pur¬
pose and under conditions in which they can properly be
expected.
1 hus if a recently dead person appears in
sleep to a surviving relative, giving him some important
message or announcing his death at a distance—such a
dream is true.
Or when a well-known seer or spiritistic
medium is visited in his sleep and next day announces the
message he has received, no one doubts the reality of his
vision.
Or when people go to the island of Tuma and
there dream of dead relatives, no doubt exists in the na¬
tive mind that these really have appeared to them.
Or
again, in the moon of milamala, when the spirits of the
dead return to the villages, they will appear to the head¬
man, or to some other notable person, in his sleep and
convey to him their wishes.
Several such nocturnal visits
occurred during my residence in the Trobriands.1
At
times a substitution will take place, as when an old woman
appeared to her son and told him that she was dead, while,
in reality, it was the mother of another boy working on
the same plantation who had died in the distant Trobri¬
ands.
But there are also visions of dead friends and rela¬
tives who tell untrue things, announce events which never
1 Cf. my article in the Journ. of the R. Anthrop. Inst., 1916, sec
dd
sq.
3>
happened, or behave in an unseemly manner.
Such
dreams are not caused by spirits, who, say the natives,
have nothing to do with them; and they are not true.
Another important type of dream in which spirits play
a part are those which are initiated by some condition in
the dreamer.
Whereas in visitations at the milamala, or
from the spirit island of Tuma, or directly after the death
of some person, it is the recently deceased who are seen,
in this other class of dreams ancestral spirits of old stand¬
ing are active.
Thus when a child is to be born (see ch.
viii), the spirit of an ancestress appears and announces the
coming incarnation.
More important are the visits of
ancestral spirits associated with the art of magic, in which
spirits play a considerable part.
Many spells begin with
a list of persons who have at one time wielded this magic.
Such lists of ancestral names are perhaps the most uni¬
versal feature of Trobriand spells.
In certain magical
rites, spirits receive offerings of food with a short invo¬
cation; in return they show some concern for the aims of
the rite and communicate with the magician, thus affect¬
ing not only the ritual but also the practical activity which
goes with it.
For a magician has in most cases not merely
to utter the spell and perform the ritual, but also com¬
prehensively to control the practical activity with which
his magic is connected.
To put it more concretely: the ex officio leader of a
kula expedition, the traditional organizer of fishing and
hunting, the hereditary master-in-charge of the gardens,
invariably wields the magic proper to these pursuits.
In
virtue of both offices, he is credited with deeper knowl389
edge and greater foresight than his associates.
For one
thing, he is liable, under the control of ancestral spirits,
to dream about his enterprise.
Thus the master of the
gardens, in dreams inspired by his predecessors in office,
will learn of impending drought or rain, and he will give
advice and orders accordingly.
The fishing magician
hears from his ancestral spirit of shoals coming through
this or that passage in the reef, or swimming along a cer¬
tain channel on the lagoon, and he will order his team to
set out in the morning and to cast their nets at the appro¬
priate spot and hour.1
A cynical ethnographer might be tempted to suspect
that such prophetic dreams are double-edged: when they
come true, this is not only practically useful, but proves
the goodwill of ancestors and the validity of magic; when
they do not come true, it is a sign that the spirits are angry
and that they are punishing the community for some rea¬
son, and still the truth of magical tradition is upheld.
The dream in any case serves its purpose to the magician.
And indeed, in these latter days of disbelief and decay
of custom, the spirits have frequent occasion to become
angry, and the magician needs all the means at his dis¬
posal to vindicate his personal authority and to maintain
belief in his powers.
But in the old days, as even now in
districts with an unimpaired tradition, there was no ques1 Compare the more detailed descriptions of these facts given in other
places: for the part played by ancestral spirits in magic, article on
“Baloma: The Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands,” Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1916, pp. 384-482; for prophetic
dreams, p. 366; for milamala dreams, p. 379; for pregnancy dreams, chap,
vii of this book and “Baloma,” pp. 406-18; for the psychology of magical
filiation and the relation between magic and myth, Myth in Primitive
Psychology, and chap, xii of Argonauts of the Western Pacific.
tion of made-up dreams.
In any case they were not born
of anxiety for his own position, but of care for the success
of the enterprise he was controlling.
The garden magi-
, cian, the head fisherman, the leader of an expedition,
identifies himself to a great extent in ambition, in hope,
and in effort, with the communal interest.
He is ex¬
tremely keen that all should go well, that his village
should surpass all others, that his ambition and pride
should be justified and win the day.
There are also dream revelations connected with the
black magic by which disease and death are produced.
Here it is the victim who has the vision, and, in fact, this
is one of the ways of detecting which sorcerer, by evil
spells and rites, has caused his illness.
Since the sick man
always suspects one or other among his enemies of prac¬
tising or of purchasing sorcery, it is no wonder that such
dreams reveal a culprit.
However, they are naturally not
regarded as “subjective,” but as a by-product of the evil
magic.
Yet another class of dreams, to which allusion has
already been made (ch. xi, sec. 7), is the dream induced
by magic not indirectly and secondarily, but as its main
effect.
The natives have a definite theory of magic acting
through dreams upon the human mind.
In connection
with the half-commercial, half-ceremonial exchange of
the kula, the magic of compulsion to generosity (the
mwasila) will be performed, and this acts upon the mind
of the other party to the transaction.
Although distant
hundreds of miles and separated by stormy seas and
reefs, the latter will be visited by the “dream response”
(kirhala) of this magic.
He will dream agreeably and
benevolently of the magic maker, his mind (nanola) will
soften towards him, and he will be generous in his prepa¬
ration of gifts.1
Some forms of love magic described in the previous
chapter are based on the same assumption.
Erotic dreams
(kirisala) are the response to certain charms.
Dreams of
a sexual or erotic nature are in fact always attributed to
magic.
A boy or girl dreams of a person of the opposite
sex; this means that this person has performed love magic.
A boy dreams that a certain girl enters his house, speaks
to him, approaches him, lies beside him on the mat,
though before she had been unwilling to talk to him or
even to look at him.
Her shyness has been only pretence.
All the time she was preparing or even performing magic.
In the dream, she is loving and submissive; she permits
all caresses and the most intimate approach.
The boy
wakes up: “It is all an illusion (sasopa, literally, a lie),”
he thinks.
mat.”
“But no, there is seminal fluid spilt over the
The girl, in her dream-form, has been there.
He
knows that she makes magic for him and already is halfinclined to pursue her.
This is an account, noted down
partly in native as it was given to me, from the man’s
point of view; but an analogous dream would come to a
girl.
It is characteristic that the dream takes place, not
in the mind of the performer, but in that of his victim.
A married man would try to conceal such visitations
11 am afraid I have not made this point quite clear in Argonauts of
the Western Pacific (cf., however, pp. 102, 202, 203, 360, and 361). Most
spells of the kula magic act at a distance upon the partner’s mind, even
as they are recited at home.
from his wife, for she would be angry because he had had
congress in dreams with another woman.
Also she would
know that the other woman had made magic and would
* be specially watchful, so that the man would find it diffi¬
cult to follow up the dream intrigue.
One very important class of erotic dreams are those of
an incestuous nature.
There are, however, serious diffi¬
culties in the way of any inquiry about them.
Free and
easy as these natives are, by custom and convention, in
most sexual matters, they become extremely sensitive and
prudish whenever their specific sexual taboos are touched
upon.
This is especially true of incest taboos, and above
all of that one concerning the brother-sister relation.
It
would have been quite impossible for me to inquire di¬
rectly into the incestuous dream experiences of any of my
informants 5 but even the general question, whether inces¬
tuous dreams occurred, would be met with indignation or
vehement denial.
Only by dint of very gradual and
guarded inquiry among my most trustworthy informants,
was I able to find out that such dreams do occur and that,
in fact, they are a well-known nuisance.
“A man is some¬
times sad, ashamed and ill-tempered.
Why?
Because
he has dreamed that he had connection with his sister,”
and “This made me feel ashamed,” such a man would
say.
The fact that the incestuous dream, especially as
between brother and sister, occurs frequently and disturbs
the minds of the natives considerably, accounts in part for
the strong emotional reaction to any inquiry into the sub¬
ject.
The lure of “forbidden fruit,” which everywhere
haunts men in dreams and day-dreams, suggests inces-
tuous motives in Trobriand folk-tales and has for ever
associated love and the magic of love with the myth of
incest (ch. xiv).
It is important to note that, as we shall see presently,
even incestuous erotic dreams are excused on the ground
that some magic has been misapplied, accidentally mis¬
directed, or wrongly performed with regard to the
dreamer.
We are now in a position to formulate more precisely
the native attitude towards dreams.
All true dreams are
in response to magic or to spiritual influence, and are not
spontaneous. The distinction between free or spontaneous
dreams on the one hand and stereotyped dreams on the
other, corresponds roughly to the native distinction be¬
tween dreams which are s as of a (a lie or illusion), and
those which are induced by magic or spirits—that is, are
true, relevant and prophetic; or again to the difference
between dreams which come without, and those which
come with an u’ula (cause or reason).
While the natives
do not attach much importance to spontaneous dreams,
they regard the others as of the same substance as magical
influence and as possessing a reality comparable to that of
the spirit world.
The inconsistencies and lacunas in their
beliefs about dreams are similar to those found in their
ideas of an after-life in a disembodied state.
Most con¬
spicuous in their belief, perhaps, is the view that magic
first realizes its effect in dreams which, by influencing the
mind, can thus bring about objective changes and events.
Thus all “true” dreams may be actually prophetic.
Another interesting link between dreams and the mys394
tical doctrine of the Trobriander is the recurrence of
clairvoyant visions in myths and folk-tales—a subject
only to be touched on here.
Thus we shall see in the
' myth of the origins of love, that the man from Iwa is led
to discover the tragic double suicide and the magical spray
of mint by a dream of what has occurred in the grotto.
In a myth about the origins of sorcery, a brother sees in
a dream that his sister has been killed by the primeval
crab-wizard.
In a folk-tale to be related presently, about
the snake and the two women, a man from Wawela
dreams of the distressed maiden and comes to her rescue.
In other folk-tales, events happening in a different place
are visualized, or a rhyme sung at a distance acts as a
spell and produces day-dreams.
It is clear that dream, day-dream, magical incantation,
realization by ritual and mythological precedent are
welded into an interlocking system of self-confirmatory
realities.
Dreaming is conceived as one of the real mani¬
festations of magic, and, as it is a definite personal expe¬
rience, it brings home the efficacy of the specific magic
employed.
It is thus an important empirical link in the
doctrine of magical efficiency and of mythological reality,
one which should not be overlooked if we want to under¬
stand the psychology of belief among the Trobrianders.
The subject of dreams in general, and erotic dreams in
particular, throws valuable light on the natives flow of
imagination and desire.
The psychology of their dreams
is closely parallel to that of romantic love and of “falling
in love.”
In native tradition and official doctrine we find
a distrust of spontaneous and free elements, of untram395
melled and unprescribed impulses in conduct.
Similarly
we find that the legitimate and true in dreams is always
due to some definite motive, once for all laid down by
tradition 5 and among the motives by far the most impor¬
tant is magic.
That this official view does not cover the facts, that it
is not completely true to them, is obvious.
In dreams
as in romantic love and love impulse, human nature
breaks through and flatly contradicts dogma, doctrine, and
tradition.
Incestuous dreams are the best example of this.
Established doctrine in the Trobriands as elsewhere makes
use of man’s susceptibility to authoritative suggestion, and
of his tendency to be impressed by positive instances and
to forget negative ones.
It first makes the distinction
between true and false dreams j then minimizes, explains
away, or forgets contradictory instances, while using all
confirmatory ones as further proof of its validity.
Thus
incest, whether in myth, reality, or dream, is always ex¬
plained by an accidental misuse of magic.
This motive is
as clear and prominent in the Trobriand story of incest as
in our own myth of Tristan and Isolde.
In passing to the expression of sex in folk-lore, we must
bear in mind that Trobriand manners do not ban sex as
a subject for conversation, save in the presence of certain
tabooed relatives, and Trobriand morals do not condemn
extra-marital intercourse, except in the forms of adultery
and incest.
The attraction of the subject and its piquancy
is not due, therefore, to the feeling that it is socially and
artificially forbidden.
And yet there is no doubt that the
•natives regard bawdiness as “improper” j that there is a
certain strain about it, barriers to be broken and a shyness
to overcome and a corresponding enjoyment in getting rid
of the strain, breaking the barriers and overcoming the
shyness.
It follows from this emotional attitude that sex is sel¬
dom treated crudely and brutally; that there is a con¬
siderable difference in the manner and tone adopted to¬
wards it by, for instance, a coarse fellow of low rank who
has no social dignity to maintain, and the descendant of
chieftains who touches sexual subjects, but touches them
lightly, with refinement, subtlety, or wit.
In short, man¬
ners exist in this matter and are socially valued and graded
according to rank.
Sex, like excretory functions and
nudity, is not felt or regarded as “natural,” but rather as
naturally to be avoided in public and open conversation,
and always to be concealed from others in behaviour 5
hence, to repeat, the “improper” interest in occasional
infringements.
Folk-lore, the systematized forms of oral and intel¬
lectual tradition, includes significant games and sports,
carving and decorative art, folk-tales, typical sayings,
jokes, and swearing.
In the Trobriands, representations
of sexual matters are completely absent from decorative
art and from dancing.
The only exceptions to this rule
are to be found in certain artistically inferior modern
productions, invented under the decomposing influence of
European culture, though not in any way influenced by
European patterns.
Dancing and decorative art, there¬
fore, do not fall within our scope.
For the rest, sexual
elements in games and sports have already been discussed,
sex in joking and swearing will be dealt with in the next
chapter, and there remain, for our present consideration,
sexual folk-tales and the bawdy figures and sayings con¬
nected with “cat’s-cradles.”
String figures or cat’s-cradles (ninikula) are played by
children and adults in the day time during the rainy
months from November to January, that is, in the sea¬
son when the evenings are passed in reciting folk-tales.
On a wet day, a group of people will sit under the over¬
hanging roof of a yam house or on a covered platform
and one will display his skill to an admiring audience.
Each set of figures has a name, a story, and an interpre¬
tation.
Some also have a ditty (vinavina), which is
chanted while the artist evolves and manipulates the
figure.
Many sets are completely devoid of sex interest.
Among the dozen or so which I have recorded the fol¬
lowing ones show pornographic details.1
In kola kasesa Ba’u (the clitoris of Ba’u) the per¬
former, after preliminary manipulations, produces a de¬
sign (Diagr. A, in Fig. Ill) in which two large loops are
formed in the main plane of the figure, while at the bot¬
tom of each, a smaller loop sticks out at right angles to
the main plane.
The large loops each represent a vulva
and the smaller ones a clitoris.
There is obviously a little
XI did not make any attempt to record the technique of cat’s-cradles.
In each set I merely recorded the significant figure or figures, the mean¬
ing and the psychology.
Fig. 3.—Cats’-Cradles
<o
anatomical inaccuracy in this arrangement, since in nature
there is only one organ and in this the clitoris is placed at
the top and not at the bottom of the vulva.
But, no
- doubt, Ba’u was an anomaly.
The figure complete, the artist skilfully wriggles his
fingers, producing a movement first in one and then in
the other of the clitoris loops.
While thus engaged, he
recites rhythmically, but not without jocular inflections,
the following words:
Kola kasesa
Ba’u (repeated)
Her clitoris of Ba’u (repeated)
Kam kasesam, kam kasesam, etc.
Thy clitoris,
thine, etc.
which might be freely rendered: “Look, that is the cli¬
toris of Ba’u, that is her clitoris.
thy clitoris!”
O Ba’u, thy clitoris, O
The movements and song are repeated a
number of times, to the great amusement of both onlook¬
ers and artist; then the figure is undone, to a repetition
of the words:
Syagara dyaytu dyaytuy Syagara dyaytu dyaytu, etc.
These words are merely onomatopoetic, imitating the
rhythmic beat of the drums in dance music.
Ba’u is ob¬
viously a female personality, but nothing is known of her
besides what we learn from this performance.
The cli¬
toris is a favourite subject for jokes, stories, and allusions.
It is often used in pars pro toto figures of speech and is
regarded as a specially attractive and funny detail in the
female organism.
A short set, entitled with some directness and sim¬
plicity “copulation” (kayta), represents this function in
a naturally somewhat conventionalized manner.
The
strings (Diagr. B, in Fig. Ill) are made to form a dou¬
ble cross, in which the horizontal arm represents the
woman and the vertical the man.
The strings are then
pulled so that the centre loop, which represents the geni¬
tals, moves rapidly, up and down, and right and left, and
this, to the imagination of the amused onlookers, stands
for the characteristic motion in sexual congress.
There
is no ditty to this set.
Tokaylasi, the adulterer (C, in Fig. Ill), is a more
complicated set and requires both hands, the two big toes
and the heels for its composition.
The accompanying
commentary is just spoken in ordinary prose.
The first
figure (C, i) is formed, in its significant section, of two
isosceles triangles, one above the other and touching by
the apex.
These triangles represent the adulterer and the
wife engaged in the act of copulation.
To indicate this,
strings are manipulated so that the point of contact moves
up and down, while each triangle in turn increases and
decreases in size.
At the same time the artist declares in
unambiguous language: “This is the adulterer5 this is the
wife; they copulate.”
The figure will not be devoid of
significance to those acquainted with the native method of
copulation described above (ch. x, sec. 12).
The figure is then dissolved to the artist’s comment:
tokaylasi bila wa bagula, “the adulterer goes to the gar¬
den.”
He then adds: layla la mwala, “the husband
comes”—and by that time the strings form a figure con400
sisting of two loops placed at an angle (C, 2).
As these
loops begin to move in their turn, each shrinking and
expanding (C, 3 and 4), he says placidly: Ikayta la
* kwava, “he has intercourse with his wife.”
Thus adul¬
tery in the Trobriands is represented by two triangles
instead of one.
One more cat’s-cradle of a purely anatomical character
has still to be mentioned.
It is named after the hero
Sikwemtuya, though this personality has no other claim
to fame than his cat’s-cradle.
Four loops symmetrically
disposed around the central point (D, in Fig. Ill) repre¬
sent the head, the legs and the two testicles of Sikwem¬
tuya.
Then this duologue is sung:
“Sikwemtuya, Sikwemtuya avaka kuvagi?”
“Sikwemtuya, Sikwemtuya what art thou doing?”
<(Bayamata la
kaybaba
guya'u”
“I guard
the decorated food of the chief.”
<(Bagise
puwam?”
“May I see your testicles?”
With the last words, one of the testicles begins to en¬
large and to move slowly, while Sikwemtuya, through the
mouth of the artist, utters a self-satisfied grunting noise,
somewhat like ka ka ka ka . . .
He is then requested to
show the other one,
((Tagise
piliyuwela,”
“Let’s see the other one,”
and answers with the same words, ka ka ka ka . . . and
a similar exhibition of his second testicle.
I should like to add that the comical effect of the
grunting noises, ka, kay kay kay is irresistible, and would
be as much envied by a modern (and somewhat risque)
cabaret artist, as Melanesian or West African carvings
and modellings are admired by modern sculptors.
But
it is very difficult to render linguistic effects and a sense
of fun and ribaldry embodied in speech through the me¬
dium of another tongue, whereas decorative art, sculp¬
ture, and music speak their own universal language.
sex in folk-lore: faceti;e
In the matter of stories, we will begin with the amus¬
ing folk-tales (kukwanebu) told during the evenings of
the rainy season for the entertainment of young and old.
They contain accounts of avowedly fantastic and unbe¬
lievable events y they are meant to stir the imagination, to
pass the time pleasantly, and, above all, to raise a laugh
—at times a very ribald laugh.1
A few of them are en¬
tirely devoid of sexual or scatological motives, and can
only be touched on here.
There is the tale about fire
and water, in which fire threatens to burn water, but
water touches it and quenches it.
There is one in which
a greedy crab wants to catch the fruit collected by a grass¬
hopper, but the fruit falls on him and he is killed.
A
pretty story is told of a beautiful girl who is wooed by
the birds.
She finds fault with one after another, and
* For a more detailed account of the sociological and cultural character
of these stories and their relation to other types of folk-lore cf. Myth in
Primitive Psychology.
finally accepts the smallest and most modest among them.
A tale is told of the legendary ogre Dokonikan; his gar¬
dens are robbed by a girl who is imprisoned by him and
then set free by the youngest of her five brothers; and
another describes a contest between the same ogre and a
-hero.
The latter tale is told, in certain districts, not as a
myth but as a funny story.
A purely gustatory account
of two brothers, who, after a time of starvation, over-ate
to bursting point, provokes much laughter by its entirely
innocent jokes.
Only in one story does the fun turn on defecation: a
man sticks to a tree after he has relieved himself, and
dies as his relatives try to pull him free.
In the tale of
the louse and the butterfly, the joke consists in the louse
emitting a resounding noise from the rectum, by which
explosion he is thrown olf the butterfly’s back and drowned
in the sea.
I will now relate the stories with a sexual motive, giv¬
ing them in order of increasing ribaldry.
The Snake and the Two Women.—Two sisters go in
search of eggs. The younger, in spite of a warning, takes
away the eggs of the snake.
The mother snake chases
the thief through all the villages, and finds her at last
roasting the eggs in her own village of Kwabulo.
To
punish her, the snake enters her body through the vulva,
coiling up inside it with only the tail and the nose stick¬
ing out.
After which, as the natives put it:
ivagi
kirisala,
ikarisaki
matala
it makes
dream response
it induces dream
eye his
Gumwawela
man of Wawela.
In other words, this happening brought about a dream
response, it induced a vision before the eyes of a man of
Wawela.
This man comes to the rescue and, by magic,
induces the snake to creep out, when he kills it.
The Two Brothers and the Chiefs Wife.—A younger
brother goes to a distant chief’s garden, meets the chief’s
wife there and they fornicate under a mango tree.
He
is caught by the outraged husband, who brings him to the
village and places him on a high platform, to await his
death.
However, his brother rescues him by magic, and
makes all the men of that village disappear by the same
means} after which the two marry the women and settle
down.
The Reef Heron and Ilakavetega.—Ilakavetega is an
old woman who lives with her granddaughters.
These
go to the seashore, where they meet a reef heron who
inquires who they are.
Ilakavetega.”
intones:
“We are the granddaughters of
“Tell her then,” answers the bird, and
Kaypwada'u
wila,
Full of sores
cunnus hers,
k ay pill pill
wila,
full of small sores
cunnus hers,
kaypwadahuyala
wilay
sore covered
cunnus hers,
kaykumikumi
wila:
eaten away by sores
cunnus hers:
ihusi
kalu momonay
It flows down
her
discharge,
akanuwasi
yaegu
bo’i.
I lap it up
myself
reef heron.
This somewhat gratuitous insult is repeated in full and
with the same sing-song intonation to the grandmother,
who accompanies her granddaughters to the seashore next
day, meets the reef heron and hears what he has to say
for herself, so that his song is chanted three times in the
course of the narrative.
The heron unfortunately gets
entangled among the coral on the reef, and is caught,
killed, and eaten, but the interests of poetic justice are
served, for a sorcerer kills Ilakavetega and her grand¬
daughters to avenge the death of this amiable and witty
bird.
Also the sorcerer copulates with each of his victims
before killing them.
The Stingaree.—In this story the ribald and dramatic
interest are nicely balanced.
In the village of Okayboma
there lives a woman, mother of five sons, who is endowed
with the anatomical anomaly of five clitorises.1
In the
tidal creek of that village dwells a giant stingaree.
One
day when the boys are out in the taro-garden, the sting¬
aree flops up the mangrove swamp, gets into the village,
and enters the house, intoning a ribald and cruel ditty:
O vavari, vavari,
O vavari, vavari,
Vart to’iy to’i.
Afiasisi,
afaneha,
I cut it sore,
I scarify it,
1 The arithmetical expert will, no doubt, discover that the old lady had
six clitorises.
I reproduce the native story as it was given me.
4-05
magusisiy
magusike’iy
I want to cut it,
I want to cut at it,
oritala
wild
inumwaya’iy
one
cunnus hers
slackens,
bayadi
kala kasesa}
I saw
her
clitoris,
ba’ilituliy
bitotina,
biwokwo.
I cut off,
it snaps,
it is over.
This may be rendered, the onomatopoetic words being
repeated as they occur: “O vavari, vavari, vari to'i, to’i—
I cut it and make a scar of it, I cut it with a will, I like
to cut at it, one part of her vulva has got slack, I shall
saw off one of her clitorises, I saw it off till it snaps and
is gone.”
The stingaree then proceeds to business, copulates with
the old woman and cuts off one of her multiple append¬
ages.
My native informants, in their commentary, af¬
firmed that the va’i had a penis; but it seems more likely
that those who originally contributed to the making of
the story were inspired by the long, saw-edged dart in
the middle of the stingaree’s tail, which, were it used as
a sexual instrument, would certainly have the baleful re¬
sults described in the story.
The sons come back and the mother complains; so the
eldest one offers to protect her next day.
But when the
stingaree flops along into the village, and when he intones
his sadistic ditty, and when this chant, like a magical spell,
produces a portent (kariyala) in the form of lightning
and thunder, the son runs away and the mother is de406
prived of another kasesa (clitoris).
Nor do the second,
third, and fourth brothers behave any better.
Four times
does the stingaree repeat every word of his ditty and
every detail of his behaviour, until the mother is left with
but one clitoris, and only the youngest son to defend it
and to save her life.
For the story assures us that she
could not survive the loss of all the five kasesa.
The youngest son prepares a number of spears made
of strong hardwood, places them all along the road which
the cruel fish has to traverse from the creek-head to the
house, and then waits in ambush.
When the stingaree appears, he sings his ditty for the
last time.
Now, however, he sings: “One only, a solitary
one clitoris remains.
I have come, I shall finish it off; it
will be over with her clitorises, she will die.”
I shall
quote the end of the narrative in free translation.
“The stingaree imagines that he will enter the house.
The son sits high up, on the raised platform in front of
the house.
He grasps the spear, he pierces the stingaree.
This runs away; the man, however, comes down.
He
takes the spear made of se'ulawola wood, which he had
stuck in the areca palm.
He throws it, and the impact
causes the stingaree to stand up.
pierced it also.
The next spear has
The man runs to the natu fruit tree, takes
the spear made of tawaga wood and throws it.
He runs
to the mango tree and takes the spear of hard palm wood,
he pierces the stingaree’s eye.
He takes a strong cudgel
and hammers the stingaree till it dies.”
The story ends
with the return of the elder brothers who disbelieve the
young man’s story, until they are convinced by the sight
of the stingaree’s corpse.
Then the fish is cut up and
distributed among those lagoon villages in which it is not,
as is usual in the Trobriands, considered an abomination.
The Story of Digawina.—The heroine’s name etymo¬
logically defines her anatomical peculiarities and her char¬
acter.
The root diga means “to fill out,” “to pack into”;
wina is the dialectic and archaic form of wila, cunnus.
Digawina is endowed with very large and comprehensive
genitals.
It is her custom to attend the big distributions
of food (sagali) made after a man has died, and to steal
more than her share; packing coco-nuts, yams, taro, areca
nuts, betel pods, large chunks of sugar cane, and whole
bunches of bananas into her vagina.
Thus things mys¬
teriously disappear, to the great annoyance of all others
present, and particularly of those who arrange the feast.
Her practices are discovered at last.
The master of the
next distribution conceals a large black mangrove crab
(kaymagu) among the food, who cuts through her kasesa
(clitoris) and thus kills her.
With this tragic event the
story ends.
The White Cockatoo and the Clitoris.—A woman
named Karawata gave birth to a white cockatoo, who flew
away into the bush.
One day Karawata went to the gar¬
den, telling her kasesa (clitoris) to look after the kumkumuri (earth baking oven).
dently: Kekekeke.
The kasesa replies confi¬
But the white cockatoo has seen
everything from the bush; he swoops down and strikes
the clitoris, who cries out plaintively: Kikikiki, and top¬
ples over, while the cockatoo eats the contents of the oven.
(It is necessary to imagine the big, flat mound-like earth
oven, the tiny clitoris standing on guard, and the cruel
white cockatoo watching sardonically for its chance. The
absurdity of the situation appeals to the natives’ sense of
, the ludicrous.)
Next day, Karawata says again to her kasesa: “Let us
catch pig, get some yams, and bake it all in the earth.”
Again she takes off her kasesa, and leaves it to look after
the oven, and the kasesa says confidently as before:
Kekekeke. Again the white cockatoo descends from the
branch, strikes the kasesa, who, with a plaintive kikikiki,
topples overj and again the cockatoo eats the contents of
the oven. Next day the woman says: “I shall go to gar¬
den and you look properly after the food.” Kekekeke,
answers the kasesa, but all that happened on the two pre¬
vious days is repeated, and Karawata and her kasesa die
of hunger.
Mwoydakema.—This hero sees two women who are
going to fetch salt water from the beach. He hails them:
Wo!
Wo!
tayyu
two
kada
our (dual)
vivila!
women!
Wo!
Wo!
mitakuku
nibbled eyelashes
mitakuku,
nibbled eyelashes,
yoku.
thou.
This, in free translation, means:
“Hullo! two women are coming. Hullo! Sweethearts,
those with whom I would like to exchange nibbling of
eyelashes.”
The women answer:
O gala
O not
ikwani.
it grips.
Which amounts more or less to our colloquial “Nothing
doing.”
Mwoydakema then exclaims:
0/ kimali kadi kimali yoku,
which means: “O thou, erotic scratching”j
in other
words: “You with whom I would like to exchange erotic
scratches.”
The women, however, walk on and leave him to the
polishing of his stone axe.
But he runs ahead of them
to the beach and, by means of a magic ditty, moves the
sea, which covers him and leaves him buried in the sand
with only the penis sticking out.
The women come upon this solitary object on the
beach, and begin to quarrel about to whom it belongs.
Finally, one after the other, they bestride it, pulling each
other off, and each wanting to enjoy it as long as possible.
This to the natives is the most hilarious part of the nar¬
rative.
After they have gone, Mwoydakema shakes off
the sand, runs back to his axe, and hails the women again
(almost in the same words) as they walk back from the
beach.
Next day the same events are repeated, and the
women have three turns each at the “stick” (as they call
it) on the beach.
On the third day the same thing hap¬
pens again, but after the women have enjoyed the “stick,”
they conceive the idea of digging it up and taking it home.
They gradually discover the various parts of Mwoyda¬
kema, till he jumps up and runs away.
And when they
go back to the village they have to pass him once more,
and he teases them with their performances.
Momovala.—Momovala goes with his daughter to the
garden and sends her up a tree.
He looks up and sees
her genitals, and emits the long-drawn katugogova.
This
is produced by giving voice on a high-pitched note, while
the sound is interrupted by the rapid beating of the mouth
with the hand.
It is used to express intense emotional
excitement of a pleasant kind.
screamed.
She asks him why he
“I saw a green lory,” he answers.
The same
sequence is repeated, and he mentions another bird, and
so on several times over.
When she comes down from
the tree, the father has already discarded his pubic leaf
and is in a state of erection.
She is very confused, and
weeps.
He, however, seizes her, and copulates and copu¬
lates.
After all is over, she sings a ditty which may be
rendered: “O Momovala, Momovala!
father my father.
Gut of my gut,
Father by name, he seized me, he
brought me, he wronged me.”
The mother hears her
and guesses what has happened.
“Already he has got
hold of the girl and copulated.
I shall go and see.”
The mother meets them, the girl complains and the
father denies.
The girl goes to the seashore with all her
belongings, and sings to a shark to come and eat up, first
her wooden board for the making of grass skirts, then
her basket, then one arm, then the other arm, and so on,
interminably singing the same ditty for each object.
Finally she sings: “Eat me up altogether,” and the shark
does so.
At home Momovala asks the mother where the girl
has gone, and learns of her tragic death.
His answer is
to ask the mother to take off her grass skirt and to copu-
late with him.
The story describes his horizontal motions,
which are so strong that his wife complains: Yakay, yakay,
an expression of pain.
deeper.
But he only pushes deeper and
She complains again to no purpose.
She dies
after the act.
Next day people ask him in the garden what has
happened.
He says that his wife has been speared.
“Where?”
“In her vagina.”
Momovala then cuts off
his penis and dies.
This is perhaps the cruellest story of my collection.
SEX IN folk-lore: legend and myth
Passing from the purely narrative and entertaining
fairy tales to more serious forms of folk-lore, we find, in
Kwabulo, one of the lagoon villages, a local legend of a
pronouncedly sexual character.
The story is told in a
manner half-way between the serious and the jocular.
It
is, indeed, a significant legend to the inhabitants, for it is
embodied in a famous song, it is associated with the his¬
tory of their village and it is believed to be true, since
certain natural features in the locality witness to its au¬
thenticity.
Also it contains elements of the tragic, espe¬
cially in the self-castration of the hero and in his lyric
yearning for his distant home.
The central theme is
ribald, however} and when telling it or referring to it, as
they often do, the natives are by no means solemn, but
delight to exaggerate and multiply unseemly similes
about the crux of the tale, which is the long penis of the
Women in the Water Collecting Shells
Head Pool of the Tidal Creek of Kwabulo
hero, the legendary headman of Kwabulo.
I shall quote
this story, keeping as closely as possible to the native style
of narrative.
The Legend of Inuvayla’u
In the village of Kwabulo there lived Inuvayla’u the
head of his clan, the Lukuba clan; the head of his vil¬
lage.
He copulated with the wives of his younger
brothers, of his maternal nephews.
When the men went out fishing, he would stand out¬
side a house, and make a hole in the thatch; he then
thrust his penis through the thatch and fornicated.
His
penis was very long ; his penis was like a long snake.
He would go into the garden when the women made
koumwala
(clearing the ground from debris prepara¬
tory to planting); or when they pwakova (weeded the
ground).
He would stand right away behind the fence,
he stood in the uncut bush and his penis wriggled on the
ground like a snake.
The penis crept along all the way.
The penis would approach a woman from behind as she
was bending down to her task.
It would strike her hard
till she fell, and on all fours she would be fornicated with
as the penis entered the vulva.
Or when women went to bathe in the lagoon the penis
would go under the water like an eel and enter the vulva.
Or when they went to collect shells, as women do on the
western shore (pi. 80), wading and feeling for them with
the toes in the mud of the lagoon, Inuvayla’u would for¬
nicate with them.
When the women went to the water-
hole, he would smash their coco-nut shell bottles and
fornicate with them.
The men were then very angry for
they had no water to drink.
women.
They would abuse the
The women would be too ashamed to speak,
for their bottles had been broken.
One day the men
ordered, telling their wives:
“Cook fish, cook taytu, make pudding of taro, so that
our revered old man eats his fill.”
“No,” answered the
women, “we shall not do it; this man does wrong by us;
when you go to fish, and we remain in the village, when
we work in the garden, by the water-hole, in the lagoon,
he does violence to us.”
Then the men watched him.
going to fish.
They said they were
They hid in the weyka (the thick scrub
surrounding the village), they saw: Inuvayla’u stood out¬
side a hut, he made a hole in the thatch; his penis sneaked
on the ground, it crept through the hole, it came in: he
wronged the wife of his younger brother.
The men went
to the garden . . . (here the various conditions under
which the hero plays his foul pranks on the women are
again enumerated, in almost exactly the same words as
before).
When his younger brothers, his maternal nephews, saw
this, they grew very angry.
Next morning they ducked
him; they ducked him in the head pool of the tidal creek,
which comes up to the village of Kwabulo (pi. 81).
He came out of the water.
He returned to his house,
his mind was full of shame and of sorrow.
He spoke to
his mother Lidoya: “Bake some taytu and fish.
in the ground.
Bake it
Pack all our belongings and the food in
your big basket; lift it and put it on your head; we shall
go, we shall leave this place.”
When all was ready, he came out of his house, which
stood on the baku (central place of the village).
wailed aloud, facing the baku.
he cut at his penis.
He
He took his kema (axe),
First he wailed and wailed over it,
holding it in his hands.
Then he cut off the point of his
penis; it came off on the baku in front of his house; it
was turned into stone.
The stone is still there, on the
baku of Kwabulo in front of the headman’s house.
cried and wailed and went on.
He
He stood outside the outer
ring of houses, he looked back, he took his penis and wept
over it.
He struck again with his axe.
fell off and was turned into stone.
outside the village in Kwabulo.
went on.
The second bit
It can be seen still
He cried and wailed and
Half-way between the village and the tidal
pool of the creek he stopped.
the houses.
He looked back towards
He took his penis into the palms of his hands,
he wept over it and cut off another bit.
It turned into
stone, and can be seen there not far from Kwabulo.
He
came to the canoes; he looked back towards the village,
he wept over his genitals.
He took the axe and cut off
the remaining stump of his penis.
It was turned into
stone, and it lies now near where the Kwabulo men moor
their canoes.
He entered his canoe and punted along.
Half-way down the creek he wept once more. He gripped
his axe and cut off his testicles.
Large white coral boul¬
ders (vatu) lie in the creek.
They are the token: they
show where Inuvayla’u cut off his testicles.
Inuvayla’u and Lidoya, his mother, went to Kavataria
(to the north of Kwabulo, a village, from which over¬
seas expeditions are made south).
He stole a large waga
(canoe), a mwasawa (sea-going canoe).
caught him and chased them away.
(a village further north).
But the owner
They went to Ba’u
He took a sea-going canoe;
he told his mother Lidoya: “Put in your basket, we shall
sail.”
They sailed, they came to I’uwaygili (a village on
Kayleula).
He told his mother . . . (here the same
words as above are repeated; then they sail again, arrive
at another village and again he asks her to put in her
basket; and so on, through a monotonous enumeration of
the villages along the lagoon and through the Amphlett
Islands down to the koya, the high mountains on the
D’Entrecasteaux Archipelago). Inuvayla’u arrived in the
koya.
There he settled, there he lived, and with him his
mother, who helped him to make gardens and cooked his
food for him.
He went out to fish with a flying kite, and
with the deep sea net which has to be sunk far under the
water. His mother made gardens on the mountain slope
and she made cooking pots for him.
One day he went high up the mountain slope.
day was clear.
The
Far away among the budibudi (the small
clouds that gather round the horizon in the monsoon sea¬
son), he saw the large flat island of Kiriwina, he saw the
wide lagoon.
On its water he saw a canoe, a canoe of
Kwabulo, his native village.1
His inside grew soft
1 For the strange and impressive contrast between the green waters and
white chalk of the Trobriands and the brown volcanic rock, high moun¬
tains and deep blue sea of the koya, compare Argonauts of ' the IVestern
Pacific, passim.
The reader will also find there accounts of the emo¬
tional attitude of the natives towards the landscape and further expres¬
sions of it in folk-lore.
4l6
(:inokapsi lopo^ula).
He wanted to see his village, he
wanted to punt among the mangroves of Kwabulo.
They sailed.
On the sea they met a boat from Kitava.
He tells his mother: “Beg them for sayaku (aromatic
black paint) j beg them for mulipwa'pwa (ornaments of
shell).”
The mother offered herself to the Kitava men.
They copulated with her on their canoe j they gave her
some sayaku and a few shell ornaments.
He had some
red paint and some red shell ornament.
On the landing-place at the head of the creek he
adorned himself.
He went to the village.
In his fes¬
tival adornment he stood on the baku (central place), he
sang the song which he had composed in the koya (south¬
ern mountains).
He taught the song to the villagers, to
his younger brothers, and maternal nephews.
them the song and the dance.
He gave
For all time this has re¬
mained the dance and song of the people of Kwabulo.
It is danced with the kaydebu (dancing shield) (pi. 82).
The men of Bwaytalu and of Suviyagila have purchased
k and they dance it also.
till he died.
Inuvayla’u lived in his village
This is the end of the story.
I obtained a few variants of this myth by hearing it
told in several villages, and also some comments which
may be added.
The act of expiatory self-castration is
sometimes made to take place on Inuvayla’u’s return
home.
This, however, does not tally with the sequence
of natural relics.
All the stones described in the myth
still exist, though the similarity to their anatomical pro¬
totypes has worn away with time, while their size must
have enormously increased.
I have seen the relics several
4H
times, but unfortunately I was always prevented by
weather or the time of day or high tide from taking a
photograph of the stones.
Making the necessary allow¬
ances for imagination and latitude in exegesis, there can
be no doubt that the testicles are in the creek—large,
round boulders just awash at low tide; while the glans
penis, a pointed helmet-shaped piece of white coral, is in
the central place of the village.
the version given in the text.
This disposition confirms
The etymology of the hero’s name indicates his fail¬
ing; the inu is unquestionably the feminine particle ina,
woman, while the verb vayla’u means actually to rob or
steal; so that his name can be translated “the thief of
woman.”
To those who believe in the existence of an
old-time gerontocracy in Melanesia this myth will be of
special interest; for in it we have the old (male) “matri¬
arch” trespassing on the rights of the younger men of his
clan and, by means of his enormous organ (the symbol
of his greater generative power, a psycho-analyst would
say), claiming all the women of the community.
Some
parts of the story show indisputable signs of greater an¬
tiquity, whereas others have obviously been modernized.
The simple crudity of the first part and its association with
natural features has all the interesting sociological signifi¬
cance of the genuine myth, gradually degenerated into
mere legend.
The second part, on the contrary, with the
song which will be quoted presently, is set in modern
and realistic conditions, and its lyrical narrative character
stamps it as a tale of more recent origin.
It is characteristic also that, in the first part of the
legend, the women are described as especially open to
attack during their specific privileged occupations, when
normally a taboo protects them and not only should a
man never make love to them but he should not even ap¬
proach them (see chapter ii, male and female provinces
-in tribal life).
It must be remembered that, while
engaged in communal weeding, women are entitled in
certain districts to attack any man who approaches them
(ch. ix, sec. 8).
This is certainly an interesting cor¬
relation and might, to an anthropologist endowed with
some imagination and a faculty for hypothetical con¬
struction, serve as a proof of the antiquity of the myth
and furnish a theory as to the custom of yausa.
By
outraging the women when engaged in such occupations
as weeding and filling the water-bottles, Inuvayla’u adds
insult to injury, and in the legend we see the women
more ashamed for the manifest insult to female preroga¬
tives in the broken water-bottles than for their abused
chastity.
Superficially this breaking of the bottles might
appear merely an unpleasant sadistic trait in the otherwise
amiable character of Inuvayla’u.
In reality, however, all
such details are sociologically very significant.
Another slight variant of the legend declares that
Inuvayla’u was not allowed to return to his village, but
was chased away immediately on his appearance.
I prefer
to discard this tragic version, partly because Anglo-Saxons
do not like sad endings in fiction, partly because it does
not harmonize well with the amiable and little vindictive
character of the Trobrianders.
The song which is ascribed to the mutilated hero of
Kwabulo is but loosely connected with the story of the
myth.
The first stanza alludes to his trespasses and their
consequences, and the expiatory resolution to go away.
The coral outcrop or coral ridge mentioned in the first
stanza and the marshy ground through which the hero is
made to wander, are poetical images of that part of the
legend in which the wanderings of the hero and his
mother are described.
The second and third stanza still follow the myth.
The part of the mother, the sorrow of the son, and the
first stages of the journey are common to both song and
legend.
But the song, neglecting completely the coarser
and perhaps more archaic elements of the myth, does not
mention castration. There is only the sorrow for the vil¬
lage left behind and the house abandoned.
To indulge in tentative speculation for another mo¬
ment: may not the first and second parts of the myth be
different stories altogether—the first part, a primitive
myth with several interesting sociological hints and impli¬
cations} the second part and the song, a tale of a real or
imaginary man, who, too amorous to be tolerated in the
community, was banished from it, and, later, offered in
expiation his song and his repentance?
In the course of
time the two were amalgamated in the legend, but not in
the song.
From the fourth stanza on, the song turns on the mo¬
tives of decoration, of dancing, of personal renown, and
of self-glorification} of women admiring the singer’s
ornaments, of his wandering through the villages and his
recurring nostalgia.
In all this the song is typical of its
kind in the Trobriands.
I am giving only the first six
stanzas because I was unable to translate the remaining
ones as fully as these.
The Song of Inuvayla’u
I
One day they ducked Inuvayla’u.
The news of the fornication spread:
He was dipped, he went under, he came out of the water.
He turned and went to the sea—
Through the raybwag 1 and dumia he went to the sea.
II
“Our mother Lidoya, get together the food,
I turn my eyes to Dugubakiki.2
My tears flow at the thought of the bwaulo 3 of my village.
My tears flow at the thought of Kwabulo, of the sweet air of Kwabulo.
III
“O mother Lidoya, put your basket on your head.”
She goes carefully, she stumbles along the creek.
She has left Kwabulo—the house is closed up.
Inuvayla’u will not fornicate any more.
Thy house is locked up—there is no more Inuvayla’u’s house.
IV
“It is put up—the mast at the mouth of the creek.
I seek for my song—I am taking the road—I—Inuvayla’u.
My road is Gulagola which leads to Tuma,
And afterwards the Digidagala road which leads through Teyyava.4 5 6
V
“Women of Kulumata, dance your dance!
Prepare for a round dance with the tubuyavi5 on your faces!
A tile’wa’i 6 for you—go then to my village,
Go to Oysayase—to Oburaku!” 7
1 Rayb'wag—coral outcrop, coral ridge; dumia—swamp marshes.
2 The landing-place of Kwabulo on the lagoon.
3 B’waulo—cloud of smoke, surrounding a village.
4 Both roads lead to the north-west district.
5 Pattern of facial decoration.
6 Flattery-bond (cf. ch. xi, sec. 3).
7 Both southern villages.
VI
“It is the time for the journey, the journey to Kiriwila.1
The children tried to retain me.
I shall go my road and come to Yalumugwa.2
My dala3—the men; my love—the women.
They admire my paya4
When I come to Okaykoda, my friends will greet me.
My mind is sad.
I am a Luba man, my fish is kaysipu.
I have fallen on evil days.”
The Story of Kaytalugi
Besides legends of events in a distant epoch, the natives
tell tales of far-away places. At almost every point of
the compass, if we were to believe the natives, some re¬
markable country is to be found if we travel far enough.
One such place is of interest to us here because of the
peculiarities of its inhabitants.
“Far away, beyond the open sea—walum, as the natives
say—if you were to sail between Sim-sim and Muyuwa
(i.e. in a northerly direction) you would come to a large
island.
It is called Kaytalugi.
Its size is that of Boyowa
(the name of the largest island in the Trobriand group).
There are many villages.
They are all beautiful.
Only women live in them.
They go about naked.
don’t shave their pubic hair.
They
It grows so long that it
makes something like a dob a (grass petticoat) in front of
them.
“These women are very bad, very fierce.
1 North-western district.
2 Village due north of Kwabulo.
3 Sub-clan.
4 Turtle-shell ear-rings.
This is be-
cause of their insatiable desire.
When sailors are stranded
on the beach, the women see the canoes from afar.
They
stand on the beach awaiting them.
The beach is dark with
their bodies, they stand so thick.
The men arrive, the
women run towards them.
•them at once.
The pubic leaf is torn off 5 the women do
violence to the men.
Okayaulo.
They throw themselves upon
It is like the yarn a of the people in
The yausa has its season during the fwakova.
When it is over, it is over.
it all the time.
They never leave the men alone.
are many women there.
comes along.
In Kaytalugi the women do
There
When one has finished, another
When they cannot have intercourse, they
use the man’s nose, his ears, his fingers, his toes—the man
dies.
“Boys are born on the island.
A boy never grows up.
A small one is misused till he dies.
him.
The women abuse
They use his penis, his fingers, his toes, his hands.
He is very tired, he becomes sick and dies.”
Such is the account given by the natives of the island
with the significant name.
Kayta means “to copulate”;
lugi is a suffix denoting complete satiation.
talugi means “the fill of copulation.”
Thus Kay¬
The natives be¬
lieve absolutely in the reality of this island and in the
truth of every detail of their account.
They tell circum¬
stantial stories of how sailors, driven towards the island
by a strong wind, will land on desert reefs rather than
risk making Kaytalugi.
The distance to the island is
about a night and a day’s journey.
If you set sail in the
morning and go obomatu (due north), you will arrive
next morning at the island.
There are also stories, believed to be true, about men
who went there and succeeded in escaping.
Thus, long
ago, some men of Kaulagu were stranded on the island,
driven off their course, according to some versions, dur¬
ing a kula expedition.
But another story has it that they
went there on purpose.
It is a custom in the Trobriands,
when work comes to a dead-lock, for one of the men to
utter a challenge.
Some extraordinary exploit, some di¬
version or festivity is proposed by him, which he always
has to lead, usually to organize, and sometimes to finance.
Those who are challenged have to follow him.
On one
occasion the men of Kaulagu were engaged in planting
yams.
The work was very hard, the yam supports re¬
fused to penetrate the stony soil.
out: Uri yakala Kaytalugi!
The headman cried
“My challenge Kaytalugi!
Let us go and see the women.”
The others agreed.
“They filled their canoe with food, firewood, water bot¬
tles, and green coco-nuts.
They sailed.
One night they
slept on the sea, the second night they slept on the sea,
the third morning they made Kaytalugi.
(This does not
agree with the version of other informants, but perhaps
the wind was not propitious!)
The women assembled on
the beach: (Wa! men are coming to our country!’
They
pulled the canoe to pieces, made a heap of the debris on
the beach and sat on it.
They copulated, copulated, copu¬
lated j one month, month after month.
The men were
distributed, each man was married to one woman.
settled.
They
“They made gardens for months and then they spoke
to their wives.
‘Are there many fish in your sea?’
The
Inuvayla’u Dance
Usikela Bananas in Kaulagu
women answered: ‘Very plentiful.’
canoe,’ said the men.
eat it all of us.’
‘Let us repair our
‘We shall get some fish, we shall
They repaired the canoe, they put leaves
and food in it, they put in water-bottles and they went
away.
They sailed three days and came back to Kaulagu,
their native village.
Their wives, who had mourned them
and then remarried, were glad to see them, and came
back to them again.
They brought home, among other
things, a new kind of banana called usikela.
You can see
itsikela growing in any village now, and eat them.
are very good” (pi. 83).
They
And this is another proof that
the story is true, and that Kaytalugi really exists.
When I asked my informants why it was that the men
of Kaulagu not only survived but escaped, I was told that
they were very strong and that no man allowed sexual
access to more than one woman.
And just as the women
were beginning to get too much for them, they made
their escape.
It is an interesting example of how every
dogmatic version relaxes when elaborated into actual ex¬
amples, even though these are imaginary.
Another story is told about a man of Kaybola, a vil¬
lage on the northern shore.
Fishing for shark, he sailed
far away.
He came to Kaytalugi and was married by one
woman.
Feeling tired of her too persistent embraces, he
made holes in all the local canoes, overhauled his own,
and then suggested to his wife that the fish were very
good that morning.
He put to sea and set sail.
The
women of Kaytalugi pushed their canoes into the water to
pursue him.
But the canoes were swamped and the man
returned safely to Kaybola.
When I expressed my doubt as to the reality of this
island, my informants suggested that it was all very well
to be sceptical, but at the same time I must not try to go
there on pain of never getting away again.
They added
that all gumanuma (white men) would like to go to Kaytalugi, but were afraid to do so.
“Look, not one guma¬
numa has been to Kaytalugi!”—another irrefutable proof
of its existence.
So far we have been discussing the less sacred classes
of folk-lore, and in these we have found the sexual mo¬
tive predominant.
The less the religious or moral sig¬
nificance of a story—the less “real” it is to the native—
the more frivolous it becomes 5 and the more frivolous it
becomes, the more frequently, as in the fairy tales {kukwanebu), does it hinge on sex.
But among legends, there
is only one story which has sex as its principal motive,
that of Inuvayla’u, and only one geographical account,
that of Kaytalugi.
The real myths (lili’u) hardly ever
have a sex motive} the myths of the origins of humanity
and of the social order, for instance, are completely free
of it. Again, in the cycle of stories about the hero Tudava,
the only sexual reference occurs in the incident of the
virgin birth, the mechanism of which is discreetly and
chastely described: the hero’s mother sleeps in a grotto,
and the dripping water (litukwa) from the roof pierces
her hymen, penetrates the vagina and thus “opens her”
(ikaripwala), making it possible for her to conceive (see
ch. vii).
No sexual elements are to be found in the several
myths referring to the circular trade kula; or in those of
the origin of fishing, of canoes, and of diving for the
spondylus shell.
Nor are any to be found in the myth of
old age, death, and the annual visit of the spirits.
Fire, according to legend, was brought forth by the
same woman who produced the sun and the moon.
The
sun and moon wander away into the sky, but the mother
keeps the fire, concealing it in her vagina.
Whenever she
needs it for cooking, she takes it out of its hiding place.
But one day her younger brother discovers where she
keeps it, steals it, and gives it to other people.
This is
the only genuine myth with a distinctly sexual element.
Sex does not play a very important part in beliefs about
supernatural beings.
The only exception to this rule is
the idea that some witches (yoyova) have intercourse with
tauva'u (malignant, anthropomorphic beings who come
from the southern islands and cause epidemics).
Thus
Ipwaygana, a woman of the Malasi clan who was mar¬
ried, against all the rules of exogamy, to Modulabu, the
Malasi headman of Obweria, has a familiar tauva’u, who
visits her sexually and teaches her the arts of evil magic
(she is to be seen on plates 77 an<i 7^)* Bomwaytani of
Kaybola, the headman’s wife and a notorious yoyova, is
also known to have a liaison with such a malignant, super¬
human instructor.
But in the Trobriands such cases are sporadic.
The
belief in a witches’ Sabbath which seems to obtain among
the Southern Massim, is not found in the northern dis¬
trict.
Informants from Normanby Island and from the
islands of the east end told me that witches forgather at
night and meet Ta’ukuripokapoka, a mythological per427
sonality and apparently an expert in evil craft.
Dances
and orgies take place, in which the witches copulate with
male beings and even with Ta’ukuripokapoka himself.
In the Trobriands, as in almost every culture, one of
the most important dogmatic systems or mythologies is
that referring to a future life.
The Trobrianders place the spirit world on a small
island called Tuma lying to the north-west.
There, un¬
seen by mortal eyes, undisturbed by the troubles of the
world, the spirits lead an existence very much like that of
ordinary Trobriand life, only much more pleasant.1
Let
me quote a good description by one of my best informants,
Tomwaya Lakwabulo (pi. 37), a famous seer, a spiritistic
medium of no mean talent and imagination (also of no
small cunning) and a frequent guest of the spirit world:
“In Tuma we are all like chiefs 5 we are beautiful} we
have rich gardens and no work to do—the women do it
all} we have heaps of ornaments and we have many
wives, all of them lovely.”
This summarizes the ideas
and aspirations of the natives with regard to the spirit
world—at least, as long as it remains a matter of remote
speculation, for their attitude towards death and the de¬
sirability of an immediate move to Tuma remains unaf¬
fected by what they think of and hope for in the next
Cf. “Baloma: The Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands” in
Journ. of the R. Anthrop. Institute, 1916, for a preliminary account based
on my hrst years investigations in the Archipelago.
world.
On this point they are exactly like ourselves.
Many a good Christian will grow enthusiastic about the
joys and consolations of Heaven without showing, how¬
ever, any alacrity to repair thither.
But in distant perspective and as a picture for dogmatic
-fantasy, the home of the spirits in Tuma remains a para¬
dise, and above all an erotic paradise.
When a native
talks about it, when he grows eloquent and relates the
traditional stories, filled out with scraps of information
gathered from recent spiritistic mediums, and elaborates
his personal hopes and anticipations—all other aspects
soon fade into the background and sex comes to the fore;
sex primarily, but set about with its appropriate trappings
of personal vanity, display, luxury, good food, and beau¬
tiful surroundings.
In their anticipations, Tuma is thronged with beautiful
women, all ready to work hard by day and dance by night.
The spirits enjoy a perpetual scented bacchanal of dancing
and chanting on spacious village-places or on beaches of
soft sand, amid a profusion of betel and of green coco¬
nut drinks, of aromatic leaves and magically potent deco¬
rations, of wealth and the insignia of honour.
In Tuma
each one becomes endowed with such beauty, dignity, and
skill that he is the unique, the admired, the pampered
protagonist of a never-ending feast.
By some extraor¬
dinary sociological mechanism, all commoners become
chiefs, while no chief believes that his relative rank is to
be diminished or dimmed by the spirits of his inferiors.
Let us follow the adventures of a spirit as he enters
his future home.
After certain preliminary formalities, the spirit comes
face to face with Topileta, the guardian of the road to
Tuma. This person, who belongs to the Lukuba clan,
looks very much like a man and is essentially human in
his appetites, tastes, and vanities. But he is of the con¬
sistency of a spirit, and his appearance is distinguished by
very large ears which flop like the wings of a flying fox.
He lives with a daughter or several daughters.
The spirit is well advised to address Topileta in a
friendly fashion and to ask the road, at the same time
presenting the valuables which were given to him for the
journey to Tuma by his surviving relatives. These valu¬
ables, be it noted, are not buried with the body nor de¬
stroyed, only pressed and rubbed against it before death
and afterwards placed on the corpse for a time (see ch.
vi, sec. 3). Their spiritual counterparts are supposed to
be taken by the spirit of the deceased on h;s journey to
the next world, and then, according to one version, offered
to Topileta, or, according to another, used to decorate the
spirit’s own person on his entrance into Tuma. No doubt
an intelligent spirit finds a way to do justice to both re¬
quirements.
Topileta, however, is not satisfied with mere gifts. His
lust is equal to his greed, so that if the spirit is a female
he copulates with her, if a male he hands him over to
his daughter for the same purpose. This accomplished,
Topileta puts the stranger on his way, and the spirit pro¬
ceeds.
The spirits know that a newcomer is arriving and
throng to greet him. Then a rite is performed which
deeply affects his mind.
row.
The spirit arrives filled with sor¬
He yearns for those left behind, for his widow,
his sweetheart, his children.
He longs to be surrounded
with his family, and to return to the bosom of his wife
or of his earthly love.
But in Tuma there is an aromatic
herb called bubwayayta.
This is made into a vana (bun¬
dle) and magic is spoken over it by a fair spirit-woman,
immediately before a male spirit appears upon the island.
As he approaches the group who stand awaiting him, the
most passionate, and, no doubt, the loveliest of the spirit
women runs towards him and waves the scented herb be¬
fore his face.
The scent enters his nostrils, carrying with
it the magic of bubwayayta.
As with the first sip of the
water of Lethe, so this scent makes him forget all that
he has left on earth, and from that moment he thinks no
more of his wife, yearns no more for his children, desires
no more the embraces of earthly loves.
His only wish
now is to remain in Tuma and to embrace the beautiful
though unsubstantial forms of spirit women.
His passions will not remain long unsatisfied.
Spirit
women, unfleshly though they appear to us mortals, have
fire and passion to a degree unknown on earth.
They
crowd round the man, they caress him, they pull him by
force, they use violence on him.
Erotically inspired by
the bubwayayta spell, he yields and a scene is enacted,
unseemly to those unused to the ways of a spirit, but ap¬
parently quite the thing in Paradise.
The man submits
to these advances and copulates with the hostess-spirit in
the open, while the others look on, or, stimulated by the
sight, do likewise.
Such promiscuous sexual orgies, in
which male and female mix indiscriminately, congregate,
change partners and reunite again, are frequent among
the spirits.
So at least I was told by several eyewitnesses,
not from the world of spirits, but from that of mediums.
For I luckily had the privilege of discussing these mat¬
ters with a number of seers who had actually been in
Tuma, dwelled among the spirits, and returned to tell the
tale.
Most prominent among my informants was Tom-
waya Lakwabulo, whose name had been mentioned to me
and his exploits recorded with a mixture of respect and
cynicism, before I actually met and worked with him.1
I also had opportunities of speaking with Bwaylagesi, a
woman medium, with Moniga’u, and with one or two
other lesser mediums.
The details of life in Tuma given
so far are common property and form part of general
folk-lore; and my eyewitnesses only confirmed these,
though they were able to add colour and concrete vivid¬
ness to them.
formation.
I shall now proceed to more esoteric in¬
Tomwaya Lakwabulo was married on earth to a woman
called Beyawa, who died about a year before I came to
Oburaku.
He has seen her since in Tuma, and, remark¬
ably enough, she has remained faithful to him, regards
herself as his wife over there, and will have nothing to
do with anyone else.
This is Tomwaya Lakwabulo’s own
1 Cf. “Baloma: The Spirits of the Dead” (Jourtt. R. Anthr. Inst., 1916),
published before my third expedition. During this expedition I lived for
several months in Oburaku, saw Tomwaya Lakwabulo in trances and in
his sober moods, and used him as a medium. I found that in spite of the
unmasking of Tomwaya Lakwabulo, described in the article noted, he
enjoyed an undiminished prestige in his own community and in the Trobriands universally. In this respect also, the Trobrianders do not greatly
differ from ourselves.
version.
He agrees, however, that in this respect the late
Beyawa, or rather her spirit, is an unprecedented excep¬
tion to all other spirit women.
For they all, married and
unmarried alike, are sexually accessible to anybody—to
him, Tomwaya Lakwabulo, in any case.
They all, with
the exception of Beyawa, make katuyausi and receive
ulatile visits.
It was long ago, when Beyawa was young and attrac¬
tive, that Tomwaya Lakwabulo paid his first visit to
Tuma.
He then made the acquaintance of one of the
most beautiful spirit girls, Namyobe’i, a daughter of
Guyona Vabusi, headman of Vabusi, a large village on
the shore of Tuma.
She fell in love with him; and, as
she was so very beautiful and moreover performed bubway ay ta magic upon him, he succumbed to her charms
and married her.
Thus he became, so to speak, a biga¬
mist, or at least a spiritual bigamist, having his wife on
earth in Oburaku and his spiritual wife in Vabusi.
Since
that time, he has regularly frequented the land of spirits
during trances, when he neither eats nor drinks nor moves
for weeks.
(At least, in theory: I visited Tomwaya Lak¬
wabulo in one of these trances, and succeeded in insinu¬
ating a tin of bully beef and some lemon squash into him,
and moved him to accept two sticks of tobacco.)
These
professional visits to Tuma, besides being agreeable on
account of Namyobe’i, are profitable, for he carries rich
presents to the spirits, entrusted to him by their surviving
relatives.
There is no reason to doubt that the spiritual
part of the presents reaches the ghosts in Tuma.
It is to the credit both of Tomwaya Lakwabulo and
of the late Beyawa that she knew and approved of his
spiritual partnership, and even allowed her own daughter
to be called Namyobe’i after the spirit wife.
Now both
wives have met in Tuma, but they inhabit different vil¬
lages.
This is in accordance with a general rule, for each
earthly community has its spirit colony to which the de¬
ceased move after death.
There are also a few villages
sui generis, not recruited from this world and showing
strange characteristics.
One of them is inhabited by
women who live in houses on piles as tall as coco-nut
palms.
No man is ever allowed to enter the village and
no man has ever had intercourse with the women.
They
bring forth children, but exclusively of the female sex.
Such female puritans are, however, happily the exception
in Tuma, where love, enjoyment, and lazy pleasure en¬
fold the happy spirits.
To enjoy life and love it is necessary to be young.
Even in Tuma, old age—that is, wrinkles, grey hair, and
feebleness—creeps upon the spirits.
But in Tuma there
exists a remedy, once accessible to all mankind, but now
lost to this world.
For old age to the Trobrianders is not a natural state—
it is an accident, a misadventure.
Long ago, shortly after
mankind had come upon earth from underground, human
beings could rejuvenate at will by casting off the old with¬
ered skin; just as crabs, snakes, and lizards, and those
creatures that creep and burrow underground, will every
now and then throw off the old covering and start life
with a new and perfect one.
Humanity unfortunately
lost this art—through the folly of an ancestress, according
to legend—but in Tuma the happy spirits have retained
it.1
When they find themselves old, they slough off the
loose, wrinkled skin, and emerge with a smooth body,
dark locks, sound teeth, and full of vigour.
Thus life
with them is an eternal recapitulation of youth with its
accompaniment of love and pleasure.
So their time passes in dancing, singing, and all that
goes with these—festive dressing, decoration, scents of
aromatic oils and herbs.
Every evening, in the cool sea¬
son, when the persistent trade wind abates, or when the
fresh sea breezes quicken the air during the sultry time
of the monsoon, the spirits put on festive attire and re¬
pair to the baku of their village to dance, just as is done
in the Trobriands.
At times, departing from earthly
usage, they will go to the beach and dance on firm cool
sand beaten by breakers.
Many songs are composed by the spirits and some of
these reach the earth, brought thither by mediums.
In
common with most such productions, these songs are a
glorification of the composer.
“The glory of their butia
(flower wreath) they sing; of their dancing; of their
nabwoda’u (ornamented basket); of their facial paintings
and decoration.”
It was quite clear that skill in garden¬
ing or carving, outstanding achievements in war or in the
kula, were no longer objects of ambition to the spirits.
Instead we find dancing and personal beauty celebrated,
and these mainly as a setting and a preliminary to sex
enjoyment.
1 For a fuller account see “Myths of Death and the Recurrent Cycle
of Life,” on pp. 80-106 of Myth in Primitive Psychology.
4 35
I will quote one example of such a song, entitled
Usiyawenuj it was composed by a ghost in Tuma, and
brought to earth by Mitakayyo of Oburaku, a medium
who was already permanently settled in Tuma when I
came to the Trobriands.
I
I shall sing the song of idle enjoyment—
My mind boils over upon my lips—
They range themselves round a circle on the baku,
I shall join them on the baku—
The conch-shell is blown—listen!
Look! The flaming butia wreath,
The butia of my sweetheart.
II
My father weeps, they start the mortuary dance for me.
Come! Let us chew betel-nut, let us throw the bubwayayta.
Let us break the pod of the betel-pepper,
The betel-nut—my mind becomes numb!
III
My friend, standing on the beach—he is full of passion.
He boils over, my friend on the northern shore of Tuma.
The red-haired man dreams of me,
He has an ornamental basket,
His face shines like the moon in its fullness.
IV
The white clouds gather low over the skyline,
I cry silently.
V
On a hill in Tuma, I rock my baby to sleep,
I shall go and look after my sister,
I shall put a bagido’u round my head,
I shall paint my mouth with crushed betel-nut,
I shall adorn myself with armshells on the western shore.
A Trobriand song is always full of omissions and of
allusions to events well known to the listeners, and can
never be quite intelligible to a stranger.
Even my native
informants, however, were not able fully to interpret this
song.
After two introductory lines, the first stanza describes
the preparations for a dance in Tuma.
In the second
stanza we have the sudden abandonment of earthly in¬
terests, brought about by bubwayayta.
In the third, a
woman sings of a man beloved by her.
She is obviously
still on earth, and her husband or sweetheart—the com¬
poser of the song apparently—has passed into Tuma.
She
looks to the north-west where monsoon clouds gather, and
weeps for him (stanza iv).
In the last of the translated
stanzas she herself has entered Tuma and describes her
attire which, as with all spirits, seems to have become her
main concern.
It is to her credit that she has not forgotten
her baby, though how such a sentimental reminiscence fits
into the frivolous atmosphere of Tuma none of my in¬
terpreters could explain.
The so-called savage has always been a plaything to
civilized man—in practice a convenient instrument of ex¬
ploitation, in theory a provider of sensational thrills.
Savagery has been, for the reading public of the last
three centuries, a reservoir of unexpected possibilities in
human nature; and the savage has had to adorn this or
that a priori hypothesis by becoming cruel or noble, licen¬
tious or chaste, cannibalistic or humane according to what
suited the observer or the theory.
As a matter of fact, the savage with whom we became
acquainted in Melanesia does not conform to any picture
in black and white, in deep shadow or vivid light.
His
life is socially hedged round on all sides, his morality
more or less on a level with that of the average European
—that is if the customs of the latter were as frankly de¬
scribed as those of the Trobriander.
The institutions
which allow of some prenuptial intercourse and even
favour it, show little to suggest any previous conditions
of unbridled promiscuity or of an institution such as
“group-marriage,” so difficult to conceive in terms of any
known social facts.
Such forms of licence as we find in the Trobriands fit
so well into the scheme of individual marriage, the fam¬
ily, the clan, and the local group—and they fulfil certain
functions so adequately that there remains nothing serious
or incomprehensible to explain away by reference to some
hypothetical earlier stage.
They exist to-day because
they work well side by side with marriage and family ;
nay, for the benefit of marriage and family; and there is
no need to assume any other causes for their past than
those which maintain them at present.
They existed
probably always for the same reason—in a slightly dif¬
ferent form, no doubt, but built on the same funda¬
mental pattern.
This, at least, is my theoretical attitude
towards these facts.
It is as important to bear in mind, however, that the
limitations, taboos, and moral rules are by no means abso¬
lutely rigid, slavishly obeyed or automatic in their action.
As we have seen again and again the rules of sex are fol¬
lowed only in an approximate manner, leaving a generous
margin for infringements; and the forces which make for
law and order show a great deal of elasticity.
Thus the
savage, measured by standards of aesthetics, morality, and
manners, displays the same human frailties, imperfections,
and strivings as a member of any civilized community.
He does not lend himself either to the straightforward
descriptive shocker, or to use as a clue for a detective story
on the sexual past of the promiscuous pithecanthropus.
In fact, as I see him, he will in no way lend himself to
quench our thirst for reconstructive sexual sensationalism.
Nevertheless, the story of Trobriand sexual life does
not lack altogether certain dramatic elements; certain con¬
trasts and contradictions which might almost excite hopes
of finding something really “inexplicable,” something
which might justify plunging into frank hypotheses, into
phantastic visions of past evolution or cultural history.
Perhaps the most dramatic element in the tradition of the
natives is the myth about brother-and-sister incest, asso¬
ciated with the power of the magic of love.
As we know, among all rules and taboos there is one
which has a really strong hold over native imagination
and moral sense 3 and yet this unmentionable crime is the
subject of one of their sacred stories and the basis of love
magic, and thus is directed, so to speak, into the full cur¬
rent of tribal life.
Here, at first sight, is an almost in¬
credible inconsistency in belief and in moral tradition, one
which might allow us to brand the natives as deprived of
moral sense, or prove them to be in the “prelogical stage
of mental development”; or else might be used to dem¬
onstrate the survival of marriage between brother and
sister, or the co-existence of two cultural strata, one in
which brother-and-sister unions are approved and the
other in which they are tabooed.
Unfortunately, the bet¬
ter we learn to understand the facts about the myth of
incest and its cultural context, the less sensational, in¬
credible, and immoral appear this and similar contradic¬
tions in custom and tradition; the less do they clamour for
explanation in hypotheses about the “savage soul,” pithe¬
canthropi or “Kulturkreise”; and we find ourselves able
instead to account for them in terms of contemporary and
observable fact.
But I have indulged long enough in
reflections of a theoretical, not to say philosophic and
moral nature; and now I must return to my humbler and
soberer task of faithful and dispassionate chronicler.
I
Love, the power of attraction, the mysterious charm
that comes forth from a woman to a man or from a man
to a woman and produces the obsession of a single desire,
is, as we know, attributed by the natives to one main
source: the magic of love.
In the Trobriands, most important systems of magic
are founded on myth.
The origin of man’s power over
rain and wind} of his ability to control the fertility of the
soil and the movements of fish} of the sorcerer’s destruc¬
tive or healing powers—all these are traced back to cer¬
tain primeval occurrences which, to the natives, account
for man’s capacity to wield magic.
Myth does not fur¬
nish an explanation in terms of logical or empirical cau¬
sality.
It moves in a special order of reality peculiar to
dogmatic thought, and it contains rather a warrant of
magical efficiency, a charter of its secret and traditional
nature than an intellectual answer to the scientific why.
The facts narrated in myth and the ideas which underlie
it, colour and influence native belief and behaviour.
The
events of a remote past are re-lived in actual experience.1
This is especially important in the myth we are discussing,
since its basic idea is that magic is so powerful that it can
even break down the barrier of the strongest moral taboo.
This influence of the past over the present is so strong
1 A fuller analysis of this functional view of myth will be found in the
writer’s Myth, in Primitive Psychology, in Argonauts of the Western
Pacific, ch. xn; and in Sex and Repression, pt. ii.
that the myth generates its own replicas and is often
used to excuse and explain certain otherwise inexcusable
breaches of tribal law.
We have already spoken about the several systems of
love magic, and pointed out that the two most important
ones are associated with two local centres, Iwa and Kumilabwaga, which are united by a myth of the origin of their
magic.
This is the story of the myth as I obtained it from in¬
formants of Kumilabwaga, the locality where the tragic
events took place.1
I shall first give the narrative in a free but faithful
translation, and then give the commentary as received
from my informant.
The numbers will allow the reader
to compare this rendering with the native text, and with
the word for word translation, which together form the
substance of the next section.
The
Myth
(i) The source (of love and magic) is Kumilabwaga.
(2) A woman there brought forth two children, a girl and
a boy. (3) The mother came (and settled down) to cut
her fibre skirt; the boy cooked magical herbs (for the
magic of love). (4) He cooked aromatic leaves in coco¬
nut oil. (5) He hung the vessel with the fluid (on a
batten of the roof near the door) and went away to bathe.
(6) The sister arrived from her firewood breaking expe1 In another place, Sex and Repression, I have published a condensed
and somewhat simplified version of the myth which, as I find, suffered
slightly in the process. The version here given, with its full native text
and two English translations, must be regarded as the full and correct
statement.
dition; she put down the firewood; she asked the mother:
“Fetch me some water, which my brother has put in the
house.” (7) The mother answered: “You go and fetch
it yourself, my legs are burdened with the board on which
I cut the skirt.”
(8 ) The girl entered the hut, she saw the water-bottles
lying there; with her head she brushed against the vessel
with the magic fluid} the coco-nut oil dripped} it trickled
into her hair; she passed her hands over it, wiped it off,
and smelt it. (9) Then the power of magic struck her,
it entered her inside, it turned her mind. (10) She went
and fetched the water, she brought it back and put it
down. (11) She asked her mother: “And what about my
brother?
(Where has the man gone?)”—The mother
gave voice: “O my children, they have become mad! He
has gone to the open seashore.”
(12) ThQ girl ran out, she sped towards the eastern
shore, to the open sea. (13) She came to where the road
abuts on the sea beach. There she untied her fibre skirt
and flung it down. (14) She ran along the beach naked;
she ran to the Bokaraywata beach (the place where the
Kumilabwaga people usually bathe, and where they beach
their canoes). (15) She came upon her brother there—
he bathed in the Kadi’usawasa passage in the fringing
reef. (16) She saw him bathing, she entered the water
and went towards him, she gave him chase. (17) She
chased him towards the rock of Kadilawolu. There he
turned and ran back. (18) She chased him back and he
went to the Olakawo rock. There he turned round and
came back running. (19) He came back and went again
to the Kadi’usawasa passage (i.e. where he was bathing
first). There she caught him, there they lay down in the
shallow water.
(20) They lay there (and copulated), then they went
ashore and they copulated again. They climbed the slope,
they went to the grotto of Bokaraywata, there they lay
down again and copulated. (21) They remained there
together and slept. (22) They did not eat, they did not
drink—this is the reason why they died (because of shame,
because of remorse).
(23) That night a man of Iwa had a dream. He
dreamt the dream of their sulumwoya (the mint plant
which they used in their love magic).
(24) “O my
dream! Two people, brother and sister are together} I
see in my mind} they lie by each other in the grotto of
Bokaraywata.” (25) He paddled over the sea arm of
Galeya} he paddled to Kitava, and moored his canoe—he
searched all over—but nothing was to be found. (26)
He paddled over the sea arm of Da’uya, he came to
Kumilabwaga, he paddled towards the shore, he landed.
He saw a bird, a frigate-bird with its companions—they
soared.
(27) He went and climbed the slope} he went and saw
them dead. (28) And lo! a mint flower had sprouted
through their breasts. He sat by their prostrate bodies,
then he went along the shore. (29) He looked for the
road, he searched and found it, he went to the village.
(30) He entered the village—there was the mother sit¬
ting and cutting her fibre skirt. He spoke: “Do you
know what has happened by the sea?” “My children
went there and copulated and shame overcame them.
(31) He spoke and said: “Come, recite the magic, so that
I may hear it.” (32) She recited, she went on reciting,
he listened, he heard till he had learnt it completely. He
learnt it right through to the end. (33) He came again,
and asked: “What is the magical song of the coco-nut
oil?” (34) He inquired, that man from Iwa. “Come
now, tell me the song of the coco-nut oil.”
(35) She recited it to the end. Then he said: “Remain
here, I shall go. Part of the magic, the opening part, let
it remain here. The eye of the magic, the finishing part,
I shall take, and let it be called Kayro’iwa.” (36) He
went off, he came to the grotto, to the sulumwoya plant
which sprouted and grew out of their breasts. (37) He
broke off a sprig of the herb, he put it into his canoe, he
sailed, he brought it to Kitava. (38) He went ashore in
Kitava and rested there. He then sailed and landed in
Iwa.
(39) These are his words (which he spoke in Iwa): “I
have brought here the point of the magic, its eye (the
sharpest, that is, the most efficient part of the magic). Let
us call it the Kayro’iwa. The foundation, or the lower
part (the less important part) the Kaylakawa remains in
Kumilabwaga.” (Henceforth the words of the speaker
refer not to Iwa, but to Kumilabwaga. This is obviously
an inconsistency, because in the myth he is speaking in
Iwa. This probably was due to the faulty recital of the
myth.) (40) The water of this magic is Bokaraywata;
its sea passage Kadi’usawasa. There (on the beach) stands
its silasila bush, there stands its givagavela bush. (41) If
people from the lagoon villages would come to bathe (in
the waterhole or in the sea passage), then the bushes
would bleed.
(42) This water is taboo to them—the
youth of our village only should come and bathe in it.
(43) But a fish caught in these waters is taboo to them
(the young people of our village). When such a fish is
caught in the nets, they should cut off its tail, then the
old people might eat it. (44) Of a bunch of coco-nuts
washed on the beach, they (the young people) must not
eat a single one—it is a taboo. Only old men and old
women may eat them.
(45) When they come and bathe in the Bokaraywata
and then return to the beach, they make a hole in the sand
and say some magic. (46) Later on in their sleep they
dream of the fish. They dream that the fish spring (out
of the sea) and come into that pool. (47) Nose to nose
the fish swim. If there is only one fish they would throw
it out into the sea. (48) When there are two, one female,
one male, the youth would wash in this water. Going to
the village, he would get hold of a woman and sleep with
her. (49) He would go on sleeping with her and make
arrangements with her family so that they might marry.
This is the happy end, they would live together and make
their gardens.
(50) If an outsider would come here for the sake of
the magic, he would bring a magical payment in the form
of a valuable. (51) He would bring it and give it to
you, you might give him the charm: (52) the spells of
the isika’i leaves, of the betel pod, of the washing charm,
of the smoking charm, of the stroking charm j you might
give him also the charm of the obsidian blade, of the coco¬
nut, of the silasila, of the buresi leaves, of the coco-nut
husk fibre, of the gimgwam leaves, of the yototu leaves,
of the comb—and for all this, they ought to pay the sub¬
stantial payment of laga.
(53) For this is the erotic payment of your magic.
Then let them return home, and eat pigs, yams, ripe
betel-nut, yellow betel-nut, red bananas, sugar cane.
(54) For they have brought you valuables, food, betelnut as a present. (55) For you are the masters of this
magic, and you may distribute it. You remain here, they
may carry it away 5 and you, the owners, remain here, for
you are the foundation of this magic.
5jc
sfc
H5
This myth really accounts, not for the origin of love
magic, but for its transfer from Kitava to Iwa.
Its most
important cultural function, however, is that, being be545
lieved, it establishes a valid precedent for the efficiency
of love magic; it proves that the spells and rites of Iwa
and of Kumilabwaga are so powerful that they can even
break down the terrible barriers which separate brother
and sister and persuade them to commit incest.
Let us now retrace the narrative and insert a few com¬
ments upon certain obscure points.
The additions to the
text obtained from the narrator are indicated by numbers
referring to the subsequent native text.
With reference to the relative age of the two children,
my informant said: (56) “The man was the eldest child,
and the woman followed.”
The family belonged to the
Malasi clan, which, as we know already, is reputed to
have a special propensity for breaking exogamous and
incestuous prohibitions.
To quote my native commen¬
tator: (57) “See, the Malasi marry their kinsfolk.
There
was one man in Wawela, a man by the name of Bigayuwo,
who married Nabwayera (a kinswoman of his); one man
in Vakuta; one man in Khava, by name of Pwaygasi, who
married Bosilasila.”
These names, which I have heard
only from this informant, might be added to the other
case previously recorded (ch. xii, sec. 4), in which a
Malasi man married a Malasi woman.
To return to the myth, it is clear that the natives take
it for granted that the Malasi of Kumilabwaga knew the
magic already.
As a matter of fact, most magic is im¬
agined to have existed from the beginning of time, and
to have been brought by each sub-clan from underground.
The story of the accidental smelling of the charmed oil
ffctc///a wo/u
Fig. 4.—The Beach of Kumilabwaca
receives dramatic piquancy from the part played by the
mother. Had she gone into the house herself and brought
water to her daughter, the tragedy would never have oc¬
curred. She, the very source of the matrilineal kinship
bond, she from whose womb the two children sprang, she
is also the involuntary cause of the tragedy. It is inter¬
esting to note that here, as in most mythological and leg¬
endary incidents, the man remains passive and the woman
is the aggressor. We find analogies to this in the stories
about Kaytalugi, in the behaviour of the women during
the Yausa, and in the reception given by female spirits to
newcomers in the next world. Eve also gives the apple
to Adam, and Isolde holds out the drink to Tristan.
The description of the actual fall is given in clear but
somewhat sober terms. To the natives, however, who
know well the beautiful setting of open sea, steep white
coral cliffs festooned with tropical foliage, and the dark,
mysterious grotto hidden among old overhanging trees,
this part of the narrative means more than is contained
in the mere words. The myth speaks to them in terms
of a familiar landscape and of many love experiences
which have taken place in just such surroundings.
The narrative lacks, as usual, any explicit allusion to
the psychology of the actors. I was able to obtain
the following commentary: (58) “The man saw her: she
had no skirt on5 he was frightened, he ran: the woman
chased him. (59) But then the desire was born inside
him; it upset his mind, and they copulated.” And again:
(61) “Already his passion was kindled inside; he desired
her with his whole body; (62) they copulated; they ca-
ressed, they erotically scratched each other.”
Thus when
the man found himself pursued, he succumbed to passion
and then he felt the pangs of love as strongly as did his
sister.
The description of the pursuit and fall will be more
easily understood with the help of the sketch (Fig. IV),
in which the main topographical features of the beach are
shown.
The brother bathes in the narrow canoe passage
facing the centre of the beach.
On seeing his sister ap¬
proach naked, he makes for the shore and then runs along
the water-line from one of the enclosing rocks to the other.
After the fall, they move to the grotto, and there remain
until their sad and romantic death.
On this map are also
indicated the two wells of which we shall hear presently.
After the two have copulated, they remain, consumed
by passion, and yet bowed down with shame, until death
ends their love and brings them freedom.
(63) “They
did not eat anything, they did not drink at all, since they
had no desire.
Shame has come over them, because they
have committed incest, brother with sister.”
The motive
of love and death is juxtaposed here, crudely and clumsily,
and yet as dramatically as native language and imagina¬
tion permit.
The picture of the two enlaced in death with
the symbol of love, the aromatic mint, springing from
their bodies is full of primitive beauty.
With the death of the lovers the real drama comes to
an end, and what follows has only a dogmatic and didactic
connection with the first act.
But the somewhat pedantic
account of the adventures and doings of the man from
Iwa—above all, of how he learnt the magic and how he
laid down the rules for its practice, is of great sociological
interest, because the pragmatic value of myth and its
normative importance for native belief and behaviour are
largely contained therein.
Who the man of Iwa was, whether of the same clan
as the brother and sister, whether their friend or a magi¬
cian, none of my informants could say: and unfortunately
I was not able to discuss the matter with anyone from the
island of Iwa itself.
Why the frigate-birds enter into the myth also remains
somewhat mysterious, for they are not associated with the
Malasi clan or with love-making.
I was told: (64) “They
go where they smell human beings.”
With regard to the
somewhat cryptic insistence (verse 33) of the Iwa man
to obtain the spell or charm (called in the text wosi,
“song,” and not by the usual word yopa, “spell”), I was
told by my informant that there is a magic of coco-nut oil
somewhat different from the one performed while the oil
is being boiled out of the coco-nut.
This spell is not in¬
dispensable to the system of love magic, and it must not
be confused with that chanted over the aromatic herbs
boiled in the already made coco-nut oil.
This spell will
be found in the next section, in verses 65 and 66.
I have
already indicated in the narrative that the last verses of
the myth (from 40 on) should be taken as addressed to
the community of Kumilabwaga and not to that of Iwa;
and that this inconsistency was probably due to my nar¬
rator’s clumsy way of telling the tale.
He was perfectly
well aware, when questioned, that the details as to what
people in Kumilabwaga should do were of no great im-
portance on the distant island of Iwa.
But he was not
prepared to change his narrative in any way.
It may be noted that, in these days, Iwa is far more
famous for love magic than the parent community, and
that the myth still tries to claim certain ancient rites of the
magic for Kumilabwaga, to which it belongs.
In the last
paragraph we have incidentally a description of certain
elements essential in this magic; we learn that it is asso¬
ciated in a mystic and mythological manner with the pas¬
sage in the fringing reef, with the sea-water of the beach
and with the wells upon it.
In fact, bathing in the surf
on that shore improves the personal appearance.
(69)
“In the reef passage of Kadi’usawasa, we, the male and
female youth of Kumilabwaga, bathe and our counte¬
nances clear up and become beautiful.”
A similar effect
is produced by bathing in the two wells of brackish water
which lie at the foot of the cliffs, under the grotto of
Bokaraywata.
But here there is a division of sexes.
(70) “Bokaraywata is the man’s water; the woman’s
water is called Momkitava.
(71) Should we
(boys)
drink of that (that is, the woman’s water) our hair would
become grey.”
In fact, if either sex bathe in the other’s
pool or drink the water, their looks will be impaired.
The story of the two small fish (verses 46-48) is not
quite clear, and the comment which I received from my
informant was practically a repetition of his original state¬
ment, and does not make it any more intelligible (see
below, verses 72 and 73 in the native text).
An interesting point in the last few verses of the myth
is the insistence on the economic side of the transaction in
love magic.
It is a further example of the natives’ in¬
terest in repayment and reciprocity.
It must be noted,
however, that it has more than a merely economic impor¬
tance ; it symbolizes also the prestige of the community
as masters in magic, and is rather a tribute to their im¬
portance, than a mere reward for services rendered.
A
careful comparison of the free rendering with the wordfor-word translation given below the native text will show
that certain commentaries have been implicitly introduced
into the former.
I cannot enter into a justification of
every one of such implicit comments, for this would lead
to too elaborate linguistic discussion.
U’ula
mala
Kumilabwaga.
Base
just
Kumilabwaga.
Le'une
latulay
tayta
v'w'ila,
tayta
She quicken with
child,
one
woman,
one
(i)
(2)
Imwa,
itata’i
doba
man.
She come,
she cut
fibre skirt
inasi;
isulusulu
kcdi
matauna.
mother their;
he cook
leaves
this man.
ta'u.
(3)
(4)
Isulubuyala
makwoyne
kwoywaga.
He cook coco- nut oil
this
kwoywaga leaves.
(5)
(6)
Isouya,
ila
matauna
ikakaya.
He hang,
he go
this man
he bathe.
Imaga
luletay
iwota-
ka'ir
She come however
sister his,
she break
wood,
it ay a,
inasi
ilukwo:
she dumps,
mother their
she tell:
“Kuwoki
kala
sopi
luguta.”
“Thou bring there
his
water
brother mine.”
(7) Ikaybiga:
She speak:
ikanaki
‘ 'Kuwokiy
wala
boge
“Thou bring there,
just
already
kaykegu.”
kaydawaga
it lie at trimming board
(8) Isuvi
She come out
leg mine.”
minana
vivilay
ikanamwo
this
woman,
it lie here
soft;
iwori
kululay
ibusi
bulamiy
water j
it flick
hair her,
it drop
coco-nut oil,
ibwika
kululay
ivagi
yamala,
iwaysa,
it drop on
hair her,
she do
arm her,
she wipe,
isukwani.
(9) B°ge
iwoyey
boge
layla
it strike.
already
it went
she smell.
Already
olopoulay
ivagt
nanola.
in inside her,
it do
mind her.
ikasopiy
imaye,
iseyeli.
she get water,
she bring,
she put down.
(10)
Ila
She go
(11)
IkatupwoH
inala:
“Mtage luguta?”
She ask
mother her:
“Indeed brother mine?”
Kawalaga:
((/O latugwa
boge
Speech her:
“O children mine
already
inagowasi!
Boge
layla
waluma.”
they are mad!
Already
he went
in open sea
(12) Ivabusiy
She come out,
(13)
ilokeya
waluma.
she go to
in open sea.
Ivabusi
okaduyuyulay
ilikwo
dabelay
She come out
end of road,
she untie
fibre skirt her,
(14) Ivayayri
iseyemwo.
she put down it.
namwaduy
She follow the shore
ila
Bokaraywata.
she go to
Bokaraywata.
(15) Hoki
She go to
ikakaya
Kadiyusawasa.
he bathe
Kadi’usawasa.
naked,
luletay
brother her,
(16)
Ikikakaya}
He bathe,
ivabusiy
layla,
ibokavili.
she come out,
he went,
she chase.
(17) Ibokavili,
She chase,
ilalo
Kadilawolu
pa-papa;
itoyewoy
she make go
to
Kadilawolu
rock;
he reverse,
(18) Ibokaviliy
She chase,
ila.
he go.
Olakawo,
ila
to
he go
itoyewoy
ikaymala.
he reverse,
he bring back.
Olakawo,
(19) Ikaymala,
He bring back,
ila
Kadiyusawasay
iyousi,
ikanarise
he go
in
Kadi’usawasa,
she take hold,
they lie down
wala
obwarita.
just
in sea.
(20) Ikanukwenusi,
ikammaynagwasi,
They lie,
they go to shore,
ivino’asi
imwoynasiy
ilousi
Bokaraywata
they finish
they climb,
they go to
Bokaraywata
o
dubwadebula
ikenusi.
in
grotto
they lie.
(21)
lkanukwenusiy
They remain lying,
(22) Gala
imasisisi.
they sleep.
No
idula
ikarigasi.
reason
they die.
ikamkwamsi,
gala
imomomsi,
they eat,
no
they drink,
(23) Aybogi
Night time
kirisalaga
iloki
magical effect
it approach
guma’lwa;
imimi
kirisala
kasi
inhabitant of Iwaj
he dream
magical effect
their
sulumwoya.
(24) “O!
mint plant.
“O!
gumimi,
tayyu
my dream,
two people
tomwota,
kasitayyu
luleta,
nanogu
humans,
they two together
sister his,
mind mine
odubwadebula
Bokaraywata
ikenusi.”
in grotto
Bokaraywata
they lie.”
(25)
Iwola
Galeya,
Pulawola;
Kitava.
ikota
He paddle
Galeya,
he paddle;
on Kitava,
he anchor
wagay
ine’iy
inenei
—gala.
canoe,
he search,
he go on searching
—no.
(26) Iwola
He paddle
Da?uyay
ima
Da’uya,
he come here
Kumilabwagay
iyulawolay
italaguway
Kumilabwaga,
he paddle on,
he disembark,
iginaga
maunay
dauta
deli
he see however
bird,
frigate-bird
together with
sola
ikokwoylubayse.
comrades his
they soar.
(27) Imway
He come here,
imwoynay
ilay
igise,
he climb,
he go,
he see,
ikatuvili,
igise,
boge
ikarigeyavisi.
he overturn,
he see,
already
they die.
(28)
U!
laysusmaga
sulumwoya
ovatikosi;
Lo!
he sprouted however
mint-plant
in chest theirs j
isisu,
ikanukwenusi,
ivayariga.
he sit,
they lie,
he skirt shore however.
Inene’i
keda,
ine*i
ibani,
ikammaynagwa
He search
road,
he search
he find,
he go to
o
valu.
in
village.
(30) Ikasobusi,
He drop out,
(29)
mmana
isisu
this woman
she sit
itata’i
dob a;
ikaybiga:
“Avaka okwadewo?”
she cut
fibre skirt;
he speak:
“What in sea-shore?”
“Latugwa
ay 10 si,
ikaytasi,
ivagi
“Children mine
they went,
they copulate,
he do
kasi
mwasila.”
their
shame.”
(31) Ilivala,
ikaybiga:
He say,
he speak:
“Kuma,
kukwa’u
megwa,
alaga.”
“Thou come here,
thou recite
magic,
I hear.”
ikikawo,
ilaga,
isisawo,
she re-recites,
he hear,
he learn,
(32) Ikawo,
She recites,
ivtnau,
isawo;
isisawo,
ivinaku,
he finish,
he learn j
he learn thoroughly,
he finish,
imwo,
imuri,
kaysisula.
(33) Imimuri,
he come here, he shift, seat his.
He shift then,
igigse
iwokwo,
ikaybiga:
“Kuneta
he see
it finish,
he speak:
“Coco-nut cream
kakariwosila?”
(34) Ikatu'powi,
He ask,
magical song his?”
ilivala,
he say,
matauna
gumaUwa:
“Wosila
this man
inhabitant of Iwa:
“Song his
kuma
kulivala/”
thou come here
thou say!”
(35)
llivala
boge
ivinakwo,
ikaybiga:
She say
already
she finish,
he speak:
“Bukusisu,
balaga;
kayu’ula
“Thou might sit, I might go however; magic herb base
Kayla-kawa
bukuseyemwo >
magic herb of Kawa
thou might put here,
matala
balalo
Kayro’iwa.”
eye his
I might carry
magic herb of Iwa.”
(36)
i
Ivabusiy
iwoki
makayna
He drop out,
he approach there
this
sulumwoya,
boge
laysusinay
itoto
mint-plant,
already
he sprout,
he stand
ovitakosiy
ku’igunigu.
in chest their,
mint plant (special variety).
(37)
Ikituniy
idigika
wagay
iwolay
ilalo
He break olf,
he load at
canoe,
he paddle,
he carry
(38) Pulawola,
Kitava.
italaguvoa
Kitava.
He paddle on,
he disembark
Kitava.
iwaywosi;
iulawolay
italaguvoa
Iwa.
he rest;
he paddle,
he disembark
Iwa.
Kitava.
(39) Kawala:
“Matala
Kayro'ivoa
“Eye his
magical herb of Iwa
lamaye,
u’ula
Kayla-kawa
I brought here,
base
magic herb of Kawa
Speech his:
ikanawo
Kumilabwaga.
he lie there
Kumilabwaga.
(4°)
Sopila
Water his
Bokaraywata,
karikedala
Kaddusawasa-,
silasila
Bokaraywata,
passage his
Kadi’usawasa;
silasila plant
itomwo,
givagavela
itomwo.
it stand here,
givagavela plant
it stand here.
(41) Kidama
taytala
Supposing
bimayse
odumdom,
one man they might come
in lagoon,
ikakayasi,
boge
bibuyavi.
they bathe,
already
he might bleed.
(4^) Bomala
Taboo his
sisopi—
bimay se,
gudi'ova'u,
their water—
they might come,
new boys,
bikikakayasi.
(43) Kidama
Supposing
they might bathe.
bikola
he might entangle
yena,
gala
bikamsi-,
ikola,
ikatunisi
fish,
no
they might eat 5
he entangle,
they nick
yeyuna,
bikamsi
numwaya,
tomwaya.
tail,
they might eat
old woman,
old man.
(44)
Luya
ikatupisawo
uwatala,
Coco-nut
he wash up by sea
one pair,
bikamsi
kwaytanidesi
bomala,
gala
they might eat
one only
taboo his,
no
bikamsi;
numwaya,
tomaya
bikamsi.
they might eat;
old women,
old men
they might eat.
(45)
Sopila
Bokaraywata
kidama
Water his
Bokaraywata
supposing
bimay se
ikakayasi,
bilousi
they might come here
they bathe,
they might go
orokaywoyne;
iyenisi,
imegivasi.
(46)
up above;
they scoop out,
they charm.
Igaugd
bimimisi
yena;
Later on however
they might dream
fish;
imimimisi,
ipelasi;
bilousiy
they dream indeed,
they jump;
they might go,
ikanawoyse
makwoyna
sopi.
(47) Kabulula
they lie there
this
water.
Nose
natana,
kabulula
naywela,
bikakayasi.
one,
nose
second,
they might bathe.
Kidamaga
natanidesi
bilisasayse,
Supposing however
one only
they might fling out,
bila
obwarita.
he might go
in sea.
(48) Kidama
nayyu,
Supposing
two.
tayta
vivila,
tayta
ta’Uy
bikakaysiy
one
woman,
one
man,
they might bathe,
aywayse
ovaluy
vivila
biy ousts ey
they go
in village,
woman
they might grasp,
bimasisisi.
(49) Imasisisiy
they might sleep.
They sleep,
ibubulise,
they stir up,
vayva’i;
iva'is'u
boge
aywokwo
relations-in-law;
they marry,
already
it was over
taytala
gudiva’uy
one
new boy,
bisimwoyse}
ibagulasi.
they might remain,
they garden.
(50) Imaga
He come here however
kalubuwamiy
<vay gu'a.
magical payment your,
objects of high value.
(50
lmayaysey
iseyemwasi
vaygu’a
They bring here,
they lay down here
vaygu’a
(52) Isika’i,
bukuyopwo Hsiga.
Isika’i leaves,
you might charm however.
kasina,
kaykakayay
ripuripUy
kasina leaves,
kaykakaya leaves,
ripuripu leaves,
kaywori
bukumegwasiy
memetu
kaywori leaves
you might charm,
obsidian blade
bukumegwasiy
luya
bukumegwasiy
you might charm,
coco-nut
you might charm,
silasila
bukumegwasiy
buresi
silasila leaves
you might charm,
buresi leaves
bukumegwasiy
kwoysanu
you might charm,
coco-nut husk fibre
bukumegwasiy
gimgwam
bukumegwasiy
you might charm,
gimgwam leaves
you might charm,
yototu
bukumegwasiy
sinata bukumegwasiy
yototu leaves you might charm, comb
you might charm,
bilagwayse.
they should pay.
(53) V ay la
For
mimegwa
sebuwala;
your magic
payment for magic;
bilousi
ikamsi
kasi
bulukwa}
kasiy
they might go
they eat
their
pig,
their food,
kasi
lalava,
kasi
samaku}
kasi
their
ripe betel-nuts,
their
yellow betel-nuts,
their
kayWusiy
kasi
toutetila,
kasi
ripe bananas,
their
ripe sugar cane,
their
(54) Bogwaga
woden—
bikamsi.
yam (variety)—
they eat.
Already however
aymayase
vaygu’a,
kaulo,
bu’a—
they brought
vaygu’a,
yam food,
areca-nut—
lukukwamsi.
(55) Tolimegwa
you eat.
yokwami,
Masters of magic
you,
mtage
bukusakayse,
kusimwoyse,
indeed
you might give,
you sit here,
bilawoysaga—
bukusimwoy saga,
they might carry however— you might sit here however,
tolimegwa
yokwami—
u'ula.
masters of magic
yourselves—
base.
I obtained the following elaborations of the narrative.
The number of the sentence referred to is given at the
beginning of each commentary.
See 2.
Commenting on the relative ages of the two
children:
(56) Kuluta
Eldest child
ta'u,
isekeli
vivila.
man,
she follow
woman.
Their names are not known.
Malasi clan.
(57) Kugis,
Thou see,
They belonged to the
Malasi
ivayva'isi
Malasi
they marry
vesiya:
taytala
Wawela,
maternal kinswomen theirs:
one man
Wawela,
Bigayuwo—
Nabway era;
Bigayuwo (name of man)—
Nabwayera (name of his
wife);
tayta
Vakuta;
tayta
Kitava,
one man
Vakuta;
one man
Kitava,
Pwaygasi—
Bosilasila.
Pwaygasi (name of man)
Bosilasila (name of his wife).
See 16.—The behaviour of brother and sister immedi¬
ately preceding the consummation of incest is thus ex¬
plained:
(58) Ta’u
Man
igisi:
gala
dabelay
ikokolay
he see:
no
fibre skirt hers,
he fear,
(59) b ga,uy
isakauli;
minana
vivila
ibokavili.
he run;
this
woman
she chase.
boge
itubwo
lopoula
mataunay
ikaytasi.
already
it upset
inside his
this man,
they copulate.
Later on,
See 14-21.—The diagram (Fig. 4, p. 547) showing
the topography will make the account of the pursuit
clearer.
See 19.
(60) Ikanarise
They lie down
wala
obwarita.
just
in sea.
Questioned about the meaning of this expression, the
informant affirmed that they first committed the act of
incest in the water.
In going over the story he described
the passion in more detail.
(61) Boge
Already
kala la}iya
ivagi
olopoula,
his
it do
in inside his,
passion
magila
kumay dona
voovoola.
desire his
all
body his.
(62) Boge
Already
ikaytasiy
ikininise,
they copulate,
they scratch lightly,
ikimalise.
they erotically scratch.
See 22.—Explaining why the two lovers remained
without food and drink and so died, my informant says:
(63) Gala
No
sitana
ikamkwamsi,
imomomsi,
pela
one bit
they eat,
they drink,
for
gala
magisiy
boge
ivagi
simwasilay
pela
no
desire theirs,
already
it do
their shame,
for
luleta
ikaytast.
brother her sister his
they copulate.
See 26.—Explaining the behaviour of the frigate-
birds :
(64) Ikokwoylubayse
ilousi,
isukonisi
They soar—
they go,
they smell odour
mayna
tomwota.
humans.
See 33.—This, the spell or chant, designated wosi
(song) and not tnegwa or yopa (spell) is sung whilst
they boil coco-nut oil for love magic. It runs:
(65) Mekaru
Gall bladder,
karuvoagu;
mevira
gall bladder mine;
woman,
viregu;
mebomay
woman mine;
North-west wind, North-west wind.
bomatu.
(66) Ip el a
He change place
karuwagu
mevira,
gall bladder mine
woman,
viregu;
meboma,
bomatu,
woman mine;
North-west wind,
North-west wind,
medara,
dara.
languor,
languor.
The rite is not performed in a strong wind(67) Kidama
Supposing
sene
bipeulo
very much
it might be strong
yagila,
gala
tavagi
megwa—
tage
wind,
no
we
magic—
so that not
(68) Igabu
biyuvisabu.
he might blow away.
niwayluwa}
Later on
calm weather,
batavagi
olabodilay
t ami gab i
we might do
in bush,
we might charm
kwoywaga
kabukwabu.
Kwayavi,
bibogi
kwoywaga plant
morning.
Evening,
at night
boge
tasayki
vivila.
already
we give
woman.
See 40.—The water in the Kadi’usawasa reef-passage
has some magical properties, as bathing in it improves the
looks.
(69) Okarikeda
In passage of
Kaddusawasa
gwadi
yakida
Kadi’usawasa
child
ourselves
takakaya
bitarise
migida.
we bathe
he might beautify
face ours.
About the brackish wells we are told:
(70) Ta’ula
Man his
Momkitava.
lasopi
Bokaraywata;
vivila
water of
Bokaraywata;
woman
(71) Kidama
Momkitava.
Supposing
tamomsi
bayse
sopi,
we drink
this
water,
boge
takasouso’u.
already
we become grey-headed.
In general, if persons of either six bathed in the other’s
well, their looks would become impaired.
The silsila and givagavela plants, mentioned in the
text (verse 40), grow near the wells.
In olden days people from other villages, even from
the neighbouring villages on the lagoon (Sinaketa and
others) were not allowed to bathe in these waters.
See 46.—Questioned about the fish, my informant
says:
(72) Imigayisey
They charm,
imimise
yena
nayiyu
they dream
fish
two
naketoki
sikurn
nayyu
small animals
sikum (name of fish)
two
kabulula
kabulula.
nose to
nose.
(73) Natanidesi,
Only one,
tails ala
we fling away
btta
obwarita,
gala
takakaya.
he might go
in the sea,
no
we bathe.
See 49.—This verse means that such magic would lead
not only to love but to matrimony:
(74) Bilivala
veyola
He might speak
maternal kinsman his
vivila:
kawala:
“Kuwokeya
kuva'isi,
woman:
speech his:
“Thou bring there
you marry
ummwala
boge.”
thy husband
already.”
Let us now pass from legend to reality, and see how
events of the present day tall/ with their prototypes in
the dim past.
It has already transpired that, in spite of
the seemingly absolute taboo, in spite of a real and over¬
whelming abhorrence felt by the natives, cases of brotherand-sister incest do yet actually occur.
Nor are they an
innovation due to European contact—an influence for
which the natives blame so many changes in custom.
Far
back, before white men appeared in the island, such
lapses from tribal morality happened, and they are re¬
membered and quoted to-day, with names and details.
One of the previous paramount chiefs, Purayasi, was
known to have lived with his sister; and another one,
Numakala, is also strongly suspected by history of this
felony.
They, of course, belonged to the Malasi clan;
and there can be no doubt that with them, as with so many
other dynasties and famous rulers, the feeling of power,
of being above the law, served as a shield from the
usual penalties.
And, as historical figures, they and their
doings would not so easily lapse into oblivion as in the
case of commoners.
I was told by my informants that,
in olden times, discovery of incest would invariably have
meant death for both culprits, self-inflicted in the usual
form of suicide.
This would at least have been the case
when commoners were concerned.
But, say the natives,
with the influx of missionaries and government officials
all custom has deteriorated, and even the worst crime can
be brazened out.
That a man may still pay the supreme penalty for
breach of the incest taboo, has been proved to me by the
following instance which came directly under my observa¬
tion.
I had not been in Omarakana more than a couple of
weeks when one morning, in July, 1915, I was casually
told by my interpreter and only informant (at that time
I still worked in pidgin English) that, in the neighbour¬
ing village of Wakayluwa, a boy named Kima’i had fallen
off a tree and killed himself—by accident.
I was also
informed that somehow, again by accident, another boy
had received a severe wound.
The coincidence seemed
to me strange at the time, but unable to speak the lan¬
guage and thus gain the full confidence of the natives, I
was still groping in the dark 5 and being much occupied
with the customs of mourning and burial, then new to me,
I gave up all attempt at getting to the bottom of the
tragedy.
Later on, I strongly suspected that the falling off the
tree was a case of suicide by loyu, but the natives remained
reticent on the subject.
For there is nothing more diffi¬
cult for an ethnographer than to find out the ins and outs
of really important and tragic events of recent date,
which, if they came under the notice of the local resident
magistrate, might lead to court proceedings, imprison¬
ments and other serious disturbances of tribal life.
And
in this case, as I learned afterwards, there was some po¬
litical element involved, since Kima’i was a relative of
Moliasi, the traditional enemy of the paramount chief,
and the incident had revived the historical tension between
the ruler of Kiriwina and that of Tilataula.1
It was only during my last visit to the Trobriands, when
almost three years had elapsed since the tragedy, that I
found out the bare outline of the case.
Kima’i had an
intrigue with his mother’s sister’s daughter.
This was no
secret, but, though the villagers generally disapproved, it
was only by the initiative of the girl’s betrothed that mat¬
ters were brought to a head.
After several attempts to
separate them, his rival insulted Kima’i in public, telling
aloud, or rather shouting across the village, the plain fact
that he was a breaker of the incest taboo, and mentioning
the name of the girl with whom the incest was committed.
This, as we know, is the most aggravated form of the
insult, and it produced the desired effect.
mitted suicide.
Kima’i com¬
The youth who brought about this was,
in fact, wounded by the kinsmen of Kima’i j hence the
strange coincidence of the two casualties occurring at the
same time.
The girl is now married and lives happily
with her husband.
She can be seen on the frontispiece
made from a photograph taken during mortuary proceed1 For an account of the political conditions among the Trobriand na¬
tives, cf. Seligman’s Melanesians and the present writer’s Argonauts of
the Western Pacific, ch. ii, sec. v, and Myth, ch. ii.
ings, at which she wears no mourning (black paint and
shaven hair) since she was a real kinswoman of the de¬
ceased (see above, ch. vi, sec. 2).
The whole occurrence
gave me some insight into the legal ideas of the natives,
but with this subject I have dealt elsewhere.1
Here it is
mainly the sexual aspect which interests us and to this we
will return.
For not all the cases of incest—even in its more repre¬
hensible form—lead to the same tragic issue.
There is no
doubt that, at present, several couples are under strong
suspicion of being guilty of the most heinous form of
suvasova, that is, of incestuous intercourse between brother
and sister.
One case given to me in detail is that of a
pretty girl, Bokaylola, who is said to allow her albino
brother to “visit” her.
I had a feeling from the way in
which my informant spoke about it that the concurrence
of two immoralities somehow mitigated both. It is felt
that, since an albino has no chance whatever of a woman
and since he is not really a man, incest with him is not so
offensive.
By far the most instructive and clear case of brotherand-sister incest, is the notorious liaison between two
Malasi people of the village of Okopukopu.
Mokadayu was still very much alive when I visited the
Archipelago, and he gave me the impression of a man of
unusual ability and intelligence.
Endowed with a beau¬
tiful voice and famous as a singer, he also for a time
exercised the lucrative profession of a spiritistic medium.
In this he arrived independently at some of the great
1 Crime and Custom, pp. 77 sq.
56 8
achievements in which our modern spiritism excels; such
as the production of ectoplasm and phenomena of mate¬
rialization (usually of worthless objects); but his spe¬
cialty was rather dematerialization (invariably of valu¬
able objects).
He would conjure up an arm and a hand
—belonging presumably to his “control”—and this was
always ready to foreclose on valuables, food, betel-nut,
or tobacco, which, no doubt, were transported to the spirit
world.
Obeying the universal law of occult phenomena,
Mokadayu’s “controls” and other spirit friends would
operate only in the dark.
The famous hand from the
other world could only be dimly seen, clutching at every
piece of worldly goods within its reach.
There are arrogant and inconsiderate sceptics, however,
even in the Trobriands and, one day, a young chief from
the north caught hold of the hand and dragged out
Mokadayu himself from the shelf where he lay con¬
cealed behind a mat.
After this, unbelievers tried to be¬
little and even to denounce spiritism, but the faithful still
brought gifts and payments to Mokadayu.
On the whole, however, he found it better to devote
himself to love and music, for in the Trobriands, as with
us, a tenor or baritone is sure of success with women.
As
the natives put it: “The throat is a long passage like the
wila (cunnus) and the two attract each other.
A man
who has a beautiful voice will like women very much and
they will like him.”
Mokadayu, indeed, used to sleep
with the chief’s wives, for he preferred married women,
who are at a premium in the Trobriands.
Finally, after
having tasted, no doubt, the minor degrees of suvasova
(clan incest), he came to what was to be the most dramatic
exploit of his life.
His sister, Inuvediri, was one of the most beautiful
girls in the village. Naturally she had many lovers; but
a strange change came over her, and she seemed disin¬
clined to sleep with her lemans. The young men of the
village were dropped one after another. They put their
heads together and decided to find out what had hap¬
pened to their mistress, suspecting that she must have
acquired a new and paramount lover, who was satisfying
all her desires. One night they noticed that brother and
sister had withdrawn to the parental house. Their sus¬
picions were confirmed: they saw a terrible thing: brother
and sister making love to each other. A serious scandal
followed; for the news spread all over the village and
brother and sister were made aware that everybody knew
of their mutual crime. The story goes that the two lived
in incest for some months after this discovery, so passion¬
ately were they enamoured of one another, but Mokadayu
had finally to leave the community. The girl married a
man from another village. I was told that, in olden
days, both would unquestionably have committed suicide.
Such is the story of Mokadayu and his sister. Together
with other facts previously described, it shows dramati¬
cally how inadequate is the postulate of “slavish sub¬
servience to custom.” It also shows that the opposite
view—that native principles are a sham and a fake—
would equally be misleading. The fact is that the na¬
tives, while professing tribal taboos and moral principles,
have also to obey their natural passions and inclinations,
and that their practice is the compromise between rule
and impulse, a compromise common to all humanity.
The myth of incest, at first sight mysterious and incom¬
prehensible, loses a great deal of its strangeness when we
have found that it reflects certain tendencies which can be
seen manifested in real life.
The temptation to incest
evidently does exist in the mind of the natives, though by
a powerful taboo it is prevented from finding ready
expression.
It is interesting to note how the myth is used to jus¬
tify the cases of real incest which happen nowadays. For
instance, a clansman of Mokadayu tried to explain and to
extenuate the latter’s crime against tribal morality as fol¬
lows.
He told how Mokadayu had prepared coco-nut oil
impregnated with love magic, in order to induce an amo¬
rous response in another girl j how Invediri, entering the
house, inadvertently spilt some of the fluid and became
intoxicated by the magic; how she discarded her fibre skirt
and lay naked on the bedstead, longingly awaiting the
brother.
How, on entering the hut, and seeing her naked¬
ness—perhaps also feeling the influence of magic on him
self—he became inflamed with passion. This paraphrase,
or rather copy, of the myth was definitely put to me as a
defence of the criminal; it was intended to show that it
was fatality rather than fault which had brought about
the abominable act.
The myth was thus used as a para¬
digm by which actuality was explained, in order to make
the deed more comprehensible and acceptable to the na-
tives.
The psychology manifested in this use of the myth
makes the function of the myth itself clearer to the
sociologist.
Far from being incompatible with the powerful inci¬
dence of the taboo, the temptation to incest is probably
strengthened by it through the irresistible fascination
which forbidden fruit always had, has, and will have for
the human being.
How far psycho-analysis can help us
to solve this problem and where it merely confuses the
issues, I have tried to discuss in a previous work.1
Here
I would like only to repeat that, by correlating the Myth
of Incest with the realities of life, by placing it side by
side with typical dreams of the natives, with their obscene
language, and with their attitude towards taboo in gen¬
eral, we find a satisfactory explanation of its apparent
strangeness in terms of fact and not of hypothesis.
i Sex
and Repression.