Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/215

 Correspondence. 199

The Sister's Son in Samoa. {Supra, p. 75.)

I have read the account given by Monsignor Stanley of "The Sister's Son in Samoa" with interest, but there are one or two features of the account which make me a httle suspicious. The customs described by Monsignor Stanley agree almost exactly with certain customs in Fiji, the Fijian name for these customs being Vasu. (The Vasu is the name for the sister's son who exercises the special privileges.) It happens that I have for some time been searching accounts of Polynesian life for customs analogous to the Vasu customs of Fiji, and I should therefore welcome Monsignor Stanley's account very heartily if it were not for the suspiciously close resemblance between the Fijian customs and those described by him, a resemblance extending even to identity of name. I am not in a position to express a positive opinion on the matter, but I cannot help suspecting that we have here an example of a custom assigned to a wrong locality.

The name " Bullamacow " is probably " pidgin English." Cows are called " bullamacows " in the South Seas sometimes.

W. H. R. Rivers.

[To this criticism, Monsignor Stanley replies (19th May, 1902) : "I have looked into my journal of 9th November, 1873, written at Apia, Samoa, and I find in it that I went with Commodore Goodenough to pay a visit to the American Consul there, who had married a Samoan wife, and that he told us many stories about the customs of the country ; among them that about the custom of Vasu. There is nothing to show that he was speaking about Fiji, and it does not seem likely that he should have done so." Mrs. Goodenough, with whom Monsignor Stanley kindly communicated on the subject, refers us to the following passage in \k\Q. Journal of Commodore Goodejiough (ed. 1875), PP- ^97' ^99' which, besides throwing light on the disputed point, affords so curious an example of the way in which two persons, writing in all good faith, may differ in their accounts of the same incident, that we subjoin it in full.

{Apia, Samoa, November ^th, 1873.) '• In p.m. I sent to all the EngUsh residents to come on board, and also the American