“I shall wave them back, (i.e., prevent all other canoes from overtaking me)!” repeated many times. “On the top of Si’a Hill; women of Tokuna; my mother a sorceress, myself a sorcerer. It dashes forward, it flies ahead. The canoe body is light; the pandanus streamers are aflutter; the prow skims the waves; the ornamental boards leap, like dolphins; the tabuyo (small prow-board) breaks the waves; the lagim’ (transversal prow-board) breaks the waves. Thou sleepest in the mountain, thou sleepest in Kuyawa Island. We shall kindle a small fire of lalang grass, we shall burn aromatic herbs (i.e., at our destination in the mountains)! Whether new or old, thou goest ahead.”

This is the exordium of the formula. Then comes a very long middle part, in a form very characteristic of Trobriand magic. This form resembles a litany, in so far as a key word or expression is repeated many times with a series of complementary words and expressions. Then the first key word is replaced by another, which in its turn, is repeated with the same series of expressions; then comes another key word, and so on. We have thus two series of words; each term of the first is repeated over and over again, with all terms of the second, and in this manner, with a limited number of words, a spell is very much lengthened out, since its length is the product of the length of both series. In shorter spells, there may be only one key word, and in fact, this is the more usual type. In this spell, the first series consists of nouns denoting different parts of the canoe; the second are verbs, such as: to cut, to fly, to speed, to cleave a fleet of other canoes, to disappear, to skim over the waves. Thus the litany runs in such a fashion: “The tip of my canoe starts, the tip of my canoe flies, the tip of my canoe speeds, etc., etc.” After the long litany has been chanted, the magician repeats the exordium, and finishes it off with the conventional onomatopoetic word saydididi—which is meant to imitate the flying of the witches.