Chapter XVII

. It may be mentioned here, however, that not only are there several types of magic performed during canoe building, such as the mwasila (Kula magic), the canoe speed magic, exorcisms against evil magic, and exorcism of the tokway, but within each of these types, there are different systems of magic, each with its own mythological basis, each localised in a different district, and each having of course different formulæ and slightly different rites. [49]

After the prow-boards are put in, and before the next bit of technical work is done, another magical rite has to be performed. The body of the canoe, now bright with the three-coloured boards, is pushed into the water. A handful of leaves, of a shrub called bobi'u, is charmed by the owner or by the builder, and the body of the canoe is washed in sea water with the leaves. All the men participate in the washing, and this rite is intended to make the canoe fast, by removing the traces of any evil influence, which might still have remained, in spite of the previous magic, performed on the waga. After the waga has been rubbed and washed, it is pulled ashore again and placed on the skid logs.

Now the natives proceed to the main and most important constructive part of their work; this consists of the erection of the gunwale planks at the sides of the dug-out log, so as to form the deep and wide well of the built-up canoe. They are kept in position by an internal framework of some twelve to twenty pairs of ribs, and all of this is lashed together with a special creeper called wayugo, and the holes and interstices are caulked with a resinous substance.

I cannot enter here into details of building, though from the technological point of view, this is the most interesting phase, showing us the native at grips with real problems of construction. He has a whole array of component parts, and he must make them fit together with a considerable degree of precision, and that without having any exact means of measurement. By a rough appreciation based on long experience and great skill, he estimates the relative shapes and sizes of the planks, the angles and dimensions of the ribs, and the lengths of the various poles. Then, in shaping them out, the builder tests and fits them in a preliminary manner as work goes on, and as a rule the result is good. But now, when all these component parts have to be pieced finally together, it nearly always happens that some bit or other fails to fit properly with the rest. These details have to be adjusted, a bit taken off the body of the canoe, a plank or pole shortened, or even a piece added. The natives have a very efficient way of lashing on a whole bit of a plank, if this proves too short, or if, by some accident, it breaks at the end. After all has been finally fitted, and made to tally, the framework of ribs is put into the canoe (see Plate XXVII), and the natives proceed to lash them to the body of the dug-out, and to the two longitudinal poles to which the ribs are threaded.

And now a few words must be said about the wayugo, the lashing creeper. Only one species of creeper is used for the lashing of boats, and it is of the utmost importance that this creeper should be sound and strong. It is this alone that maintains the cohesion of the various parts, and in rough weather, very much depends on how the lashings will stand the strain. The other parts of the canoe--the outrigger poles--can be more easily tested, and as they are made of strong, elastic wood, they usually stand any weather quite well. Thus the element of danger and uncertainty in a canoe is due mainly to the creeper. No wonder, therefore, that the magic of the creeper is considered as one of the most important ritual items in canoe-building.

In fact, wayugo, the name of that creeper species, is also used as a general term for canoe magic. When a man has the reputation of building or owning a good and fast canoe, the usual way of explaining it is to say that he has, or knows "a good wayugo." For, as in all other magic, there are several types of wayugo spells. The ritual is always practically the same: five coils of the creeper are, on the previous day, placed on a large wooden dish and chanted over in the owner's hut by himself. Only exceptionally can this magic be done by the builder. Next day they are brought to the beach ceremonially on the wooden plate. In one of the wayugo systems, there is an additional rite, in which the toliwaga (canoe owner) takes a piece of the creeper, inserts it into one of the holes pierced in the rim of the dug-out for the lashing, and pulling it to and fro, recites once more the spell.

In consideration of the importance of this magic, the formula will be here adduced in full. It consists of an exordium (u'ula), a double main part (tapwana), and a concluding period (dogina). [50]

WAYUGO SPELL.

In the u'ula he first repeats "Sacred (or ritual) eating of fish, sacred inside," thus alluding to a belief that the toliwaga has in connection with this magic to partake ritually of baked fish. Then come the words--"Flutter, betel plant, leaving behind," all associated with leading ideas of canoe magic--the flutter of pandanus streamers; the betel-nut, which the ancestral spirits in other rites are invited to partake of; the speed by which all comrades will be left behind!

A list of ancestral names follows. Two of them, probably mythical personages, have significative names; "Stormy sea" and "Foaming." Then the baloma (spirits) of these ancestors are asked to sit on the canoe slips and to chew betel, and they are invoked to take the pandanus streamer of the Kudayuri--a place in Kitava, where the flying canoe magic originated--and plant it on top of Teula or Tewara, the small island off the East coast of Fergusson.

The magician after that chants: "I shall turn, I shall turn towards you, O men of Kitava, you remain behind on the To'uru beach (in the Lagoon of Vakuta). Before you lies the sea arm of Pilolu. To-day, they kindle the festive fire of the Kudayuri, thou, O my boat" (here the personal name of the boat is uttered), "bind thy skirts together and fly!" In this passage--which is almost identical with one in the previously quoted Ligogu spell--there is a direct allusion to the Kudayuri myth, and to the custom of festive fires. Again the canoe is addressed as a woman who has to bind her grass petticoat together during her flight, a reference to the belief that a flying witch binds her skirts when starting into the air and to the tradition that this myth originates from Na'ukuwakula, one of the flying Kudayuri sisters. The following main part continues with this mythical allusion: Na'ukuwakula flew from Kitava through Sinaketa and Kayleula to Simsim, where she settled down and transmitted the magic to her progeny. In this spell the three places: Kuyawa (a creek and hillock near Sinaketa), Dikutuwa (a rock near Kayleula), and La'u (a cleft rock in the sea near Simsim, in the Lousançay Islands) are the leading words of the tapwana.

The last sentence of the first part, forming a transition into the tapwana, runs as follows: "I shall grasp the handle of the adze, I shall grip all the component parts of the canoe"--perhaps another allusion to the mythical construction of the Kudayuri canoe (comp. Chap. XII, Div. IV)--"I shall fly on the top of Kuyawa, I shall disappear; dissolve in mist, in smoke; become like a wind eddy, become alone--on top of Kuyawa." The same words are then repeated, substituting for Kuyawa the two other above-mentioned spots, one after the other, and thus retracing the flight of Na'ukuwakula.

Then the magician returns to the beginning and recites the spell over again up to the phrase: "bind thy skirt together and fly," which is followed this time by a second tapwana: "I shall outdistance all my comrades with the bottom of my canoe; I shall out-distance all my comrades with the prow-board of my canoe, etc., etc.," repeating the prophetic boast with all the parts of the canoe, as is usual in the middle part of magical spells.

In the dogina, the last part, the magician addresses the waga in mythological terms, with allusions to the Kudayuri myth, and adds: "Canoe thou art a ghost, thou art like a wind eddy; vanish, O my canoe, fly; break through your sea-passage of Kadimwatu, cleave through the promontory of Saramwa, pass through Loma; die away, disappear, vanish with an eddy, vanish with the mist; make your imprint in the sand, cut through the seaweed, go, put on your wreath of aromatic herbs." [51]

After the wayugo has been ritually brought in, the lashing of the canoe begins. First of all the ribs are lashed into position then the planks, and with this the body of the canoe is ready. This takes a varying time, according to the number of people at work, and to the amount of tallying and adjusting to be done at the final fitting. Sometimes one whole day's work is spent on this stage, and the next piece of work, the construction of the outrigger, has to be postponed to another day. This is the next stage, and there is no magic to punctuate the course of technical activities. The big, solid log is put alongside the canoe, and a number of short, pointed sticks are driven into it. The sticks are put in crossways on the top of the float (lamina). Then the tops of these sticks are again attached to a number of horizontal poles, which have to be thrust through one side of the canoe-body, and attached to the other. All this naturally requires again adjusting and fitting. When these sticks and poles are bound together, there results a strong yet elastic frame, in which the canoe and the float are held together in parallel positions, and across them transversely there run the several horizontal poles which keep them together. Next, these poles are bridged over by many longitudinal sticks lashed together, and thus a platform is made between the edge of the canoe and the tops of the float sticks.

When that is done, the whole frame of the canoe is ready, and there remains only to caulk the holes and interstices. The caulking substance is prepared in the hut of the toliwaga, and a spell is recited over it on the evening before the work is begun. Then again, the whole community turn out and do the work in one day's sitting.

The canoe is now ready for the sea, except for the painting, Which is only for ornamentation. Three more magical rites have to be performed, however, before it is painted and then launched. All three refer directly to the canoe, and aim at giving it speed. At the same time all three are exorcisms against evil influences, resulting from various defilements or broken taboos, which possibly might have desecrated the waga. The first is called Vakasulu, which means something like "ritual cooking" of the canoe. The toliwaga has to prepare a real witches' cauldron of all sorts of things, which afterwards are burnt under the bottom of the canoe, and the smoke is supposed to exercise a speed-giving and cleansing influence. The ingredients are: the wings of a bat, the nest of a very small bird called posisiku, some dried bracken leaves, a bit of cotton fluff, and some lalang grass. All the substances are associated with flying and lightness. The wood used for kindling the fire is that of the light-timbered mimosa tree (liga). The twigs have to be obtained by throwing at the tree a piece of wood (never a stone), and when the broken-off twig falls, it must be caught in the hand, and not allowed to touch the ground.

The second rite, called Vaguri, is an exorcism only, and it consists of charming a stick, and then knocking the body of the canoe all over with it. This expels the evil witchery (bulubwalata), which it is only wise to suspect has been cast by some envious rivals, or persons jealous of the toliwaga.

Finally, the third of these rites, the Kaytapena waga, consists in medicating a torch of coco-leaf with the appropriate spell, and fumigating with it the inside of the canoe. This gives speed and once more cleanses the canoe.

After another sitting of a few days, the whole outside of the canoe is painted in three colours. Over each of them a special spell is chanted again, the most important one over the black colour. This is never omitted, while the red and white spells are optional. In the rite of the black colour, again, a whole mixture of substances is used--a dry bracken leaf, grass, and a posisiku nest--all this is charred with some coco-nut husk, and the first strokes of the black paint are made with the mixture. The rest is painted with a watery mixture of charred coco-nut. For red colour, a sort of ochre, imported from the d'Entrecasteaux Islands, is used; the white one is made of a chalky earth, found in certain parts of the sea shore.

Sail-making is done on another day, usually in the village, by communal labour, and, with a number of people helping, the tedious and complicated work is performed in a relatively short time. The triangular outline of the sail is first pegged out on the ground, as a rule the old sail being used as a pattern. After this is done, tapes of dried pandanus leaf (see Plates XXVIII, XXIX) are stretched on the ground and first fixed along the borders of the sail. Then, starting at the apex of the triangle, the sail-makers put tapes radiating towards the base, sewing them together with awls of flying fox bone, and using as thread narrow strips of specially toughened pandanus leaf. Two layers of tapes are sewn one on top of the other to make a solid fabric.

IV

The canoe is now quite ready to be launched. But before we go on to an account of the ceremonial launching and the associated festivities, one or two general remarks must be made retrospectively about the proceedings just described.

The whole of the first stage of canoe-building, that is, the cutting of the tree, the scooping out of the log, and the preparation of the other component parts, with all their associated magic, is done only when a new canoe is built.

But the second stage has to be performed over all the canoes before every great overseas Kula expedition. On such an occasion, all the canoes have to be re-lashed, re-caulked, and re-painted. This obviously requires that they should all be taken to pieces and then lashed, caulked and painted exactly as is done with a new canoe. All the magic incidental to these three processes is then performed, in its due order, over the renovated canoe. So that we can say about the second stage of canoe-building that not only is it always performed in association with the Kula, but that no big expedition ever takes place without it.

We have had a description of the magical rites, and the ideas which are implied in every one of them have been specified. But there are one or two more general characteristics which must be mentioned here. First, there is what could be called the "ceremonial dimension" of magical rites. That is, how far is the performance of the rite attended by the members of the community, if at all; and if so, do they actively take part in it, or do they simply pay keen attention and behave as an interested audience; or, though being present, do they pay little heed and show only small interest?

In the first stage of canoe-building, the rites are performed by the magician himself, with only a few helpers in attendance. The general village public do not feel sufficiently interested and attracted to assist, nor are they bound by custom to do so. The general character of these rites is more like the performance of a technicality of work than of a ceremony. The preparing of herbs for the ligogu magic, for instance, and the charming it over, is carried out in a matter-of-fact, businesslike manner, and nothing in the behaviour of the magician and those casually grouped around him would indicate that anything specially interesting in the routine work is happening.

The rites of the second stage are ipso facto attended by all those who help in piecing together and lashing, but on the whole those present have no special task assigned to them in the performance of these rites. As to the attention and behaviour during the performance of the magic, much depends of course on whether the magician officiating is a chief of great importance or someone of low rank. A certain decorum and even silence would be observed in any case. But many of those present would turn aside and go away, if they wanted to do so. The magician does not produce the impression of an officiating high priest performing a solemn ceremony, but rather of a specialised workman doing a particularly important piece of work. It must be remembered that all the rites are simple, and the chanting of the spells in public is done in a low voice, and quickly, without any specially effective vocal production. Again, the caulking and the wayugo rites are, in some types of magic at least, performed in the magician's hut, without any attendance whatever, and so is that of the black paint.

Another point of general importance is what could be called the stringency of magic rites. In canoe magic, for instance, the expulsion of the tokway, the ritual cutting of the pulling rope, the magic of the adze (ligogu), that of the lashing creeper (wayugo), of the caulking, and of the black paint can never be omitted. Whereas the other rites are optional, though as a rule some of them are performed. But even those which are considered indispensable do not all occupy the same place of importance in native mythology and in native ideas, which is clearly expressed in the behaviour of the natives and their manner of speaking of them. Thus, the general term for canoe magic is either wayugo or ligogu, from which we can see that these two spells are considered the most important. A man will speak about his wayugo being better than that of the other, or of having learnt his ligogu from his father. Again, as we shall see in the canoe myth, both these rites are explicitly mentioned there. Although the expulsion of the tokway is always done, it is definitely recognised by the natives as being of lesser importance. So are also the magic of caulking and of the black paint.

A less general point, of great interest, however, is that of evil magic (bulubwalata) and of broken taboos. I had to mention several exorcisms against those influences, and something must be said about them here. The term bulubwalata covers all forms of evil magic or witchery. There is that which, directed against pigs, makes them run away from their owners into the bush; there is bulubwalata for alienating the affections of a wife or sweetheart; there is evil magic against gardens, and--perhaps the most dreaded one--evil magic against rain, producing drought and famine. The evil magic against canoes, making them slow, heavy, and unseaworthy, is also much feared. Many men profess to know it, but it is very difficult for the Ethnographer to obtain a formula, and I succeeded only in taking down one. It is always supposed to be practised by canoe-owners upon the craft which they regard as dangerous rivals of their own.

There are many taboos referring to an already constructed canoe, and we shall meet with them later when speaking about sailing and handling the canoe. But before that stage is reached, any defilement with any unclean substance of the log out of which the canoe is scooped, would make it slow and bad; or if anybody were to walk over a canoe log or stand on it there would be the same evil result.

One more point must be mentioned here. As we have seen, the first magical rite, of the second stage of construction, is performed over the prow-boards. The question obtrudes itself as to whether the designs on these boards have any magical meaning. It must be clearly understood that any guesswork or speculations about origins must be rigidly excluded from ethnographic field work like this. For a sociologically empirical answer, the Ethnographer must look to two classes of facts. First of all, he may directly question the natives as to whether the prow-boards themselves or any of the motives upon them are done for magical purposes. Whether he questions the average man, or even the specialist in canoe magic and carving, to this he will always receive in Kiriwina a negative answer. He can then enquire whether in the magical ritual for formulæ there are no references to the prow-boards, or to any of the decorative motives on them. Here also, the evidence on the whole is negative. In one spell perhaps, and that belonging not to canoe but to the Kula magic (comp. below, Chap. XIII, Div. II, the Kayikuna Tabuyo spell), there can be found an allusion to the prow-boards, but only to the term describing them in general, and not to any special decorative motive. Thus the only association between canoe decoration and canoe magic consists in the fact that two magical rites are performed over them, one mentioned already, and the other to be mentioned at the beginning of the next chapter.

The description of canoe-building, in fact, all the data given in this chapter, refer only to one of the two types of sea-going canoe to be found in the Kula district. For the natives of the Eastern half of the ring use craft bigger, and in certain respects better, than the masawa. The main difference between the Eastern and Western type consists in the fact that the bigger canoes have a higher gunwale or side, and consequently a greater carrying capacity, and they can be immersed deeper. The larger water board offers more resistance against making leeway, and this allows the canoes to be sailed closer to the wind. Consequently, the Eastern canoes can beat, and these natives are therefore much more independent of the direction of the wind in their sailings. With this is connected the position of the mast, which in this type is stepped in the middle, and it is also permanently fixed, and is not taken down every time after sailing. It obviously, therefore, need not be changed in its position every time the canoe goes on another tack.

I have not seen the construction of a nagega, as these canoes are called, but I think that it is technically a much more difficult task than the building of a masawa. I was told that both magic and ceremonial of construction are very much the same in the building of both canoes.

The nagega, that is the larger and more seaworthy type, is used on the section of the Kula ring beginning in Gawa and ending in Tubetube. It is also used in certain parts of the Massim district, which lie outside the Kula ring, such as the Island of Sud-Est, and surrounding smaller islands, and it is used among the Southern Massim of the mainland. But though its use is very widely spread, its manufacture is confined to only a few places. The most important centres of nagega building are Gawa, a few villages on Woodlark Islands, the island of Panayati, and perhaps one or two places on Misima. From there, the canoes are traded all over the district, and indeed this is one of the most important forms of trade in this part of the world. The masawa canoes are used and manufactured in the district of Dobu, in the Amphletts, in the Trobriands, in Kitava and Iwa.

One point of great importance in the relation of these two forms of canoe is that one of them has, within the last two generations, been expanding at the expense of the other. According to reliable information, gathered at several points in the Trobriands and the Amphletts, the nagega type, that is the heavier, more seaworthy and better-sailing canoe, was driven out some time ago from the Amphletts and Trobriands. The masawa, in many respects inferior, but less difficult to build, and swifter, has supplanted the bigger type. In olden days, that is, about two or three generations ago, the nagega was used exclusively in Iwa, Kitava, Kiriwina, Vakuta, and Sinaketa, while the Amphlettans and the natives of Kayleula would usually use the nagega, though sometimes they would sail in masawa canoes. Dobu was the real home and headquarters of the masawa. When the shifting began, and when it was completed, I could not ascertain. But the fact is that nowadays even the villages of Kitava and Iwa manufacture the smaller masawa canoe. Thus, one of the most important cultural items is spreading from South to North. There is, however, one point on which I could not obtain definite information: that is, whether in the Trobriands the nagega in olden days was imported from Kitava, or whether it was manufactured locally by imported craftsmen (as is done even nowadays in Kiriwina at times), or whether the Trobrianders themselves knew how to make the big canoes. There is no doubt, however, that in olden days, the natives of Kitava and Iwa used themselves to make the nagega canoes. The Kudayuri myth (see