Bronislaw Malinowski

“I lie, I shall lie down in my house, a big house. I shall sharpen my ear, I shall hear the roaring of the sea—it foams up, it makes a noise. At the bottom of Kausubiyai, come, lift me, take me, bring me to the top of Nabonabwana beach.”

Then comes a sentence with mythological allusions which I could not succeed in translating. After that follows the main part of the spell:

“The suyusayu fish shall lift me up; my child, the suyusayu shall lift me up; my child’s things, the suyusayu shall lift me up; my basket, etc.; my lime pot, etc.; my lime spoon, etc.; my house, etc.;” repeating the words “the suyusayu fish shall lift me up” with various expressions describing the toliwaga’s equipment as well as his child, presumably a member of the shipwrecked crew.

There is no end part to this spell, as it was given to me; only the beginning is repeated after the main part. It is not impossible that Molilakwa himself, my informant, did not know the spell to the end. Such magic, once learnt by a native, never used, and recited perhaps once a year during a mortuary ceremony, or occasionally, in order to show off, is easily forgotten. There is a marked difference between the vacillating and uncertain way in which such spells are produced by informants, and the wonderful precision and the easy flow with which, for example, the spells, year after year performed in public, will trip off the tongue of the garden magician.

I cannot give a correct commentary to the mythological names Kausubiyai and Nabonabwana, in the first part of the spell. What this part means, whether the reclining individual who hears the noises of the sea is the magician, or whether it represents the sensations of the fish who hears the calling for help, I could not make out. The meaning of the middle part is plain, however. Suyusayu is another name for iraviyaka, indeed, its magical name used only in spells, and not when speaking of it in ordinary conversations.

The other formula to be given here is the other giyorokaywa spell, which would be used in spitting the ginger on the beach after rescue, and also in medicating the herbs, which will be put on the beach and beaten with a stone. This spell is associated with the myth of the origin of kayga’u, which must be related here, to make the formula clear.

Near the beginning of time, there lived in Kwayawata, one of the Marshall Bennetts, a family strange to our ideas of family life, but quite natural in the world of Kiriwinian mythology. It consisted of a man, Kalaytaytu, his sister, Isenadoga, and the youngest brother, a dog, Tokulubweydoga. Like other mythological personages, their names suggest that originally they must have conveyed some sort of description. Doga means the curved, almost circular, boar’s tusk used as ornament. The name of the canine member of the family might mean something like Man-with-circular-tusks-in-his-head, and his sister’s name, Woman-ornamented-with-doga. The eldest brother has in his name the word taytu, which signifies the staple food (small yams) of natives, and a verb, kalay, signifying ‘to put on ornaments.’ Not much profit, however, can be deduced from this etymology, as far as I can see, for the interpretation of this myth. I shall quote in a literal translation the short version of this myth, as I obtained it first, when the information was volunteered to me by Molilakwa in Oburaku.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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