Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before — John Shaqi
Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long BeforeTurner, George
History
Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before
Turner, George
Islands of the Pacific -- Social life and customs; Samoan Islands
During a great scarcity occasioned by a gale cannibalism prevailed.
When a light was wanted in the evening, two or three went to fetch
it--it was not safe for one to go alone. If a child was seen out of
doors, some one would entice it by holding up something white and
calling the child to get a bit of cocoa-nut kernel, and so kidnap and
cook.
A story is also told of a woman who had a child who was playing on the
surf on the beach. Three of her brothers came along and begged her to
let them have the child. She said that if a _bloody_ surf should
suddenly appear they might have the child, but not otherwise.
Presently the surf dashed red and bloody on the shore. She kept to
her word, and let the heartless fellows carry off the boy to the oven.
Here is another piece about Ae a Tongan, who attached himself to the
Samoan chief Tinilau. Tinilau travelled from place to place on two
turtles. Ae wished to visit Tonga, and begged from his master the loan
of the turtles. He got them, with the caution to be very careful of
them. As soon as he reached Tonga he called his friends to take on
shore the turtles, kill them, and have a feast, and this they gladly
did.
Tinilau, after waiting long for the return of the turtles, suspected
they had been killed. This was confirmed in his mind by the appearance
on the beach of a bloody wave. He called a meeting of all the avenging
gods of Savaii, and put the case into their hands. They went off to
Tonga, found Ae at midnight in a sound sleep, picked him up, brought
him back to Samoa, and laid him down in the front room of the house of
Tinilau.
At cock-crowing Ae woke up and said aloud, "Why, you cock! you crow
like the one belonging to the _pig_ I lived with." Tinilau called out
from his room, "Had the fellow you lived with such a fowl?" "Yes, the
_pig_ had one just like it." "Tell us more about him," and so Ae went
on chattering, and still using the abusive epithet _pig_ when speaking
of his master, and talked about the turtles, what a fine feast they
had, etc. As it got lighter, he looked up to the roof and said, "This
too is just like the house the _pig_ lived in." By-and-by he woke up,
as it got light, to the full consciousness that somehow or other he
was again in the very house of Tinilau, and that his cannibal master
was in the next room. He was dumb and panic-stricken. Orders were
given to kill him, and he was despatched accordingly, and his body
dressed for the oven. And hence the proverb for any similar action, or
if any one takes by mistake or intention what belongs to another, he
says in making an apology, "I am like Ae."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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