Argonauts of the Western Pacific - Bronisław Malinowski (darmowa biblioteka online .TXT) 📖

class="foreign-word">yoyova is, in a way, a public one and the most important and powerful witches will be enumerated by name. But no woman will ever openly speak about being one. Of course to have such a character would in no way spoil matrimonial chances, or do anything but enhance the social status of a woman.

So deep is the belief in the efficacy of magic, and in magic being the only means of acquiring extraordinary faculties, that all powers of a yoyova are attributed to magic. As we saw in the training of a young yoyova, magic has to be spoken at every stage in order to impart to her the character of a witch. A full blown yoyova has to utter special magic each time she wishes to be invisible, or when she wants to fly, or acquire higher speed, or penetrate darkness and distance in order to find out whether an accident is happening there. But like everything referring to this form of witchcraft, these formulae never come to light. Although I was able to acquire a whole body of spells of the bwaga’u sorcery, I could not even lift the fringe of the impenetrable veil, surrounding the magic of the yoyova. As a matter of fact, there is not the slightest doubt for me that not one single rite, not one single word of this magic, have ever existed.

Once a mulukwausi is fully trained in her craft, she will often go at night to feed on corpses or to destroy shipwrecked mariners, for these are her two main pursuits. By a special sense, acquired through magic, she can „hear”, as the natives say, that a man has died at such and such a place, or that a canoe is in danger. Even a young apprenticed yoyova will have her hearing so sharpened that she will tell her mother: „Mother, I hear, they cry! Which means that a man is dead or dying at some place”. Or she will say: „Mother, a waga is sinking”! And then they both will fly to the spot.

When she goes out on such an errand, the yoyova leaves her body behind. Then she climbs a tree, and reciting some magic, she ties a creeper to it. Then, she flies off, along this creeper, which snaps behind her. This is the moment when we see the fire flying through the sky. Whenever the natives see a falling star, they know it is a mulukwausi on her flight. Another version is that, when a mulukwausi recites a certain spell, a tree which stands somewhere near her destination bends down towards the other tree on which she is perched. She jumps from one top to the other, and it is then that we see the fire. According to some versions, the mulukwausi, that is, the witch in her flying state, moves about naked, leaving her skirt round the body, which remains asleep in the hut. Other versions depict her as tying her skirt tightly round her when flying, and beating her buttocks with a magical pandanus streamer. These latter versions are embodied in the magic quoted above in Chapter V.

Arrived at the place where lies the corpse, the mulukwausi, with others who have also flown to the spot, perches on some high object, the top of a tree or the gable of a hut. There they all wait till they can feast on the corpse, and such is their greed and appetite that they are also very dangerous to living men. People who collect round the dead body to mourn and wake over it often have a special spell against the mulukwausi recited over them, by the one who knows it. They are careful not to stray away from the others, and, during burial of the dead and afterwards, they believe the air to be infested with these dangerous witches, who spread the smell of carrion around them.

The mulukwausi will eat out the eyes, the tongue, and the „insides” (lopoula) of the corpse; when they attack a living man, they may simply hit him or kick him, and then he becomes more or less sick. But sometimes they get hold of an individual and treat him like a corpse and eat some of his organs, and then the man dies. It is possible to diagnose this, for such a person would quickly fail, losing his speech, his vision, sometimes suddenly being bereft of all power of movement. It is a less dangerous method to the living man when the mulukwausi instead of eating his „insides” on the spot, simply remove them. They hide them in a place only known to themselves, in order to have provision for a future feast. In that case there is some hope for the victim. Another yoyova, summoned quickly by the relations of the dying and well paid by them, will, in the form of a mulukwausi, go forth, search for the missing organs, and, if she is fortunate enough to find and restore them, save the life of the victim.

Kenoriya, the favourite daughter of To’ulawa, the chief of Omarakana, while on a visit to another village, was deprived of her internal organs by the mulukwausi. When brought home, she could neither move nor speak, and lay down as if dead. Her mother and other relatives already began their mortuary wailing over her, the chief himself broke out into loud lamentations. But nevertheless, as a forlorn hope, they sent for a woman from Wawela, a well-known yoyova, who after receiving valuables and food, flew out as a mulukwausi, and the very next night found Kenoriya’s insides somewhere in the raybwag, near the beach of Kaulukuba, and restored her to health.

Another authentic story is that of the daughter of a Greek trader and a Kiriwinian woman from Oburaku. This story was told me by the lady herself, in perfectly correct English, learnt in one of the white settlements of New Guinea, where she had been brought up in the house of a leading missionary. But the story was not spoilt by any scepticism; it was told with perfect simplicity and conviction.

When she was a little girl, a woman called Sewawela, from the Island of Kitava, but married to a man of Wawela, came to her parents’ house and wanted to sell a mat. They did not buy it, and gave her only a little food, which, as she was a renowned yoyova and accustomed therefore to deferential treatment, made her angry. When night came, the little one was playing on the beach in front of the house, when the parents saw a big firefly hovering about the child. The insect then flew round the parents and went into the room. Seeing that there was something strange about the firefly, they called the girl and put her to bed at once. But she fell ill immediately, could not sleep all night, and the parents, with many native attendants, had to keep watch over her. Next morning, added the Kiriwinian mother, who was listening to her daughter telling me the tale, the girl „boge ikarige; kukula wala ipipisi”, „she was dead already, but her heart was still beating”. All the women present broke out into the ceremonial lamentations. The father of the girl’s mother, however, went to Wawela, and got hold of another yoyova, called Bomrimwari. She took some herbs and smeared her own body all over. Then she went out in the form of a mulukwausi in search of the girl’s lopoulo (inside). She searched about and found it in the hut of Sewawela, where it lay on the shelf on which are kept the big clay-pots, in which the mona (taro pudding), is cooked ceremonially. There it lay „red as calico”. Sewawela had left it there, while she went into the garden with her husband, meaning to eat it on her return. Had this happened, the girl could not have been saved. As soon as Bomrimwari found it, she made some magic over it then and there. Then she came back to the trader’s compound, made some more magic over ginger-root, and water, and caused the lopoulo to return to its place. After that, the little girl soon got better. A substantial payment was given by the parents to the yoyova for saving their child.

Living in Oburaku, a village on the Southern half of Boyowa, I was on the boundary between the district where the yoyova do not exist, and the other one, to the East, where they are plentiful. On the other side of the Island, which is very narrow at this part, is the village of Wawela, where almost every woman is reputed to be a witch, and some are quite notorious. Going over the raybwag at night, the natives of Oburaku would point out certain fireflies which would suddenly disappear, not to relight again. These were the mulukwausi. Again, at night, swarms of flying foxes used to flap over the tall trees, making for the big, swampy Island of Boymapo’u which closes in the Lagoon opposite the village. These too were mulukwausi, travelling from the East, their real home. They also used to perch on the tops of the trees growing on the water’s edge, and this was therefore an especially dangerous spot after sunset. I was often warned not to sit there on the platforms of the beached canoes, as I liked to do, watching the play of colours on the smooth, muddy waters, and on the bright mangroves. When I fell ill soon after, everybody decided that I had been „kicked” by the mulukwausi, and some magic was performed over me by my friend Molilakwa, the same who gave me some formulae of kayga’u, the magic spoken at sea against witches. In this case his efforts were entirely successful, and my quick recovery was attributed by the natives solely to the spells.

II

What interests us most about mulukwausi, is their association with the sea and shipwreck. Very often they will roam over the sea, and meet at a trysting place on a reef. There they will partake of a special kind of coral, broken off from a reef, a kind called by the natives nada. This whets their appetite for human flesh, exactly as the drinking of salt water does with the bwaga’u. They have also some indirect power over the elements in the sea. Although the natives do not quite agree on the point, there is no doubt that a definite connection exists between the mulukwausi and all the other dangers which may be met in the sea, such as sharks, the „gaping depth” (ikapwagega wiwitu), many of the small sea animals, crabs, some of the shells and the other things to be mentioned presently, all of which are considered to be the cause of death of drowning men. Thus the belief is quite definite that, in being cast into the water by the shipwreck, men do not meet any real danger except by being eaten by the mulukwausi, the sharks, and the other animals. If by the proper magic these influences can be obviated, the drowning men will escape unscathed. The belief in the omnipotence of man, or rather, woman in this case, and of the equal power in antidoting by magic, governs all the ideas of these natives about shipwreck. The supreme remedy and insurance against any dangers lies in the magic of mist, called kayga’u, which, side by side with Kula magic, and the magic of the canoes, is the third of the indispensable magical equipments of a sailor.

A man who knows well the kayga’u is considered to be able to travel safely through the most dangerous seas. A renowned chief, Maniyuwa, who was reputed as one of the greatest masters in kayga’u as well as in other magic, died in Dobu on an expedition about two generations ago. His son, Maradiana, had learnt his father’s kayga’u. Although the mulukwausi are extremely dangerous in the presence of a corpse, and though the natives would never dream of putting a dead body on a canoe, and thus multiplying