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

The canoe sails fast; the wind rises; big waves come; the wind booms, du-du-du-du. . . The sails flutter; the lamina (outrigger) rises high! All the usagelu crouch on the lamina. I speak magic to calm the wind. The big spell of the Sim-sim. They know all about yavata (North-Westerley Monsoon wind). They live in the eye of the yavata. The wind abates not, not a little bit. It booms, it gains strength, it booms loud du-du-du-du-du. All the usagelu are afraid. The mulukwausi scream, u-u, u-u, u-u, u; their voices are heard in the wind. With the wind they scream and come flying. The veva (sheet rope) is torn from the hands of the tokabinaveva. The sail flutters freely in the wind; it is torn away. It flies far into the sea; it falls on the waters. The waves break over the canoe. I stand up. I take the binabina stones; I recite the kayga’u over them, the giyotanawa, the spell of the Underneath. The short spell, the very strong spell. I throw the stones into the deep. They weigh down the sharks, the vineylida; they close the Gaping Depth. The fish cannot see us. I stand up, I take my lime pot; I break it. The lime I throw into the wind. It wraps us up in mist. Such a mist that no one can see us. The mulukwausi lose sight of us. We hear them shout near by. They shout u-u, u-u, u-u, u. The sharks, the bonubonu, the soka do not see us; the water is turbid. The canoe is swamped, the water is in it. It drifts heavily, the waves break over us. We break the vatotuwa, (the sticks joining the float to the platform). The lamina (outrigger float) is severed; we jump from the waga; we catch hold of the lamina. On the lamina we drift. I utter the great Kaytaria spell; the big fish iraviyaka comes. It lifts us. It takes the lamina on its back, and carries us. We drift, we drift, we drift”.

„We approach a shore; the iraviyaka brings us there, the iraviyaka puts us on the shallows. I take a stout pole, I lift it off; I speak a spell. The iraviyaka turns back to the deep sea”.

„We are all on the dayaga (fringing reef). We stand in water. The water is cold, we all shiver with cold. We do not go ashore. We are afraid of the mulukwausi. They follow us ashore. They wait for us ashore. I take a dakuna (piece of coral stone), I say a spell over it. I throw the stone on the beach; it makes a big thud; good; the mulukwausi are not there. We go ashore. Another time, I throw a stone, we hear nothing: mulukwausi are on the beach; they catch it; we hear nothing. We remain on the dayaga. I take some leyya (ginger). I spit it at the beach. I throw another stone. The mulukwausi do not. see it. It falls down; we hear it. We go ashore; we sit on the sand in a row. We sit in one row, one man near another, as on the lamina (in the same order as they drifted on the lamina). I make a charm over the comb; all the usagelu comb their hair; they tease their hair a long time. They are very cold; we do not make the fire. First, I put order on the beach; I take the piece of leyya, I spit it over the beach. One time, when the leyya is finished, I take some kasita leaves (the beach is always full of these). I put them on the shore, I put a stone on them, uttering a spell afterwards, we make fire. All sit round and warm themselves at the fire”.

„At day time, we don’t go to the village; the mulukwausi would follow us. After dark, we go. Like on the lamina, we march in the same order, one after the other. I go last; I chant a spell over a libu plant. I efface our traces. I put the libu on our track; I put the weeds together. I make the path confused. I say a charm to the spider, that he might make a cobweb. I say a charm to the bush-hen, that she might turn up the soil”.

„We go to the village. We enter the village, we pass the main place. No one sees us; we are in mist, we are invisible. We enter the house of my veyola (maternal kinsman), he medicates some leyya; he spits (magically) on all of us. The mulukwausi smell us; they smell the salt water on our skins. They come to the house, the house trembles. A big wind shakes the house, we hear big thuds against the house. The owner of the house medicates the leyya and spits over us; they cannot see us. A big fire is made in the house; plenty of smoke fills the house. The leyya and the smoke blind their eyes. Five days we sit in smoke, our skin smells of smoke; our hair smells of smoke; the mulukwausi cannot smell us. Then I medicate some water and coco-nut, the usagelu wash and annoint themselves. They leave the house, they sit on the kaukweda (spot before the house). The owner of the house chases them away. „Go, go to your wife”; we all go, we return to our houses”.

I have given here a reconstruction of a native account, as I have often heard it told with characteristic vividness: spoken in short, jerky sentences, with onamatopoetic representations of sound, the narrative exaggerates certain features, and omits others. The excellency of the narrator’s own magic, the violence of the elements at critical moments, he would always reiterate with monotonous insistence. He would diverge into some correlated subject, jump ahead, missing out several stages, come back, and so on, so that the whole is quite incoherent and unintelligible to a white listener, though the native audience follows its trend perfectly well. For it must be remembered that, when a native tells such a story, the events are already known to his listeners, who have grown up gradually becoming familiar with the narrow range of their tribal folklore. Our toliwaga, telling this story over again on the sandbank of Yakum, would dwell on such points as allowed him to boast of his kayga’u, to describe the violence of the storm, to bear witness to the traditional effects of the magic.

It is necessary for an Ethnographer to listen several times to such a narrative, in order to have a fair chance of forming some coherent idea of its trend. Afterwards, by means of direct examination, he can succeed in placing the facts in their proper sequence. By questioning the informants about details of rite and magic, it is possible then to obtain interpretations and commentaries. Thus the whole of a narrative can be constructed, the various fragments, with all their spontaneous freshness, can be put in their proper places, and this is what I have done in giving this account of shipwreck80.

A few words of comment must now be given on the text of the above narrative. In it, a number of magical rites were mentioned, besides those which were described first with their spells. Something must be said more in detail about the spells of the subsequent magical performances. There are some eleven of them. First comes the ritual invocation of the fish which helps the shipwrecked sailors. The spell corresponding to this, is called kaytaria, and it is an important formula, which every toliwaga is supposed to know. The question arises, has this rite ever been practised in reality? Some of the actions taken by the shipwrecked natives, such as the cutting ot the the outrigger float when the boat is abandoned, are quite rational. It would be dangerous to float on the big, unwieldy canoe which might be constantly turned round and round by the waves, and if smashed to pieces, might injure the sailors with its wreckage. In this fact, perhaps there is also the empirical basis for the belief that some fragments of the canoe „eat” the shipwrecked men. The round, symmetrical log of the lamina, on the other hand, will serve as an excellent lifebuoy. Perhaps a toliwaga, arrived at such a pass, would really utter the kaytaria spell. And if the party were saved, they would probably all declare, and, no doubt believe, that the fish had come to their summons, and somehow or other helped in the rescue.

It is less easy to imagine what elements in such an experience might have given rise to the myth that the natives, landed on the shore, magically lift the fish from the shallow waters by means of a charmed pole. This indeed seems a purely imaginary incident, and my main informant, Molilakwa of Oburaku, from whom I obtained the kaytaria spell, did not know the spell of the pole, and would have had to leave the iraviaka to its own fate in the shallows. Nor could I hear of anyone else professing to know this spell. The formula uttered over the stone to be thrown on the beach was equally unknown to the circle of my informants. Of course, in all such cases, when a man carrying on a system of magic would come to a gap in his knowledge, he would perform the rite without the spell, or utter the most suitable spell of the system. Thus here, as the stone is thrown in order to reconnoitre whether the mulukwausi are waiting for them, a spell of the giyorokaywa, the spell of the mulukwausi, might be uttered over the stone. Over the combs, as well as over the herbs on the beach, a giyorokaywa spell would be uttered, according to my informants, but probably, a different spell from the one spoken originally over the ginger root. Molilakwa, for instance, knows two spells of the giyorokaywa, both of which are suitable to be spoken over the ginger and over the beach respectively. Then there comes another spell, to be uttered over the libu plant, and in addressing the spider and the bush-hen. Molilakwa told me that the same spell would be said in the three cases, but neither he, nor anyone else, among my informants could give me