Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/65

Rh beach, they will ask him if he is going to eat worms or sea-slugs. If anyone were to ask John where to find Virsal, he would say,—"He is in Panoi" (the Banksian Hades), or in some other sacred place. If a dance is to take place at which Virsal is to be present, John will go too, and will rush upon Virsal with a club and seize him, and will only relax his hold on the payment of money, which Virsal will have brought with him because he will know what is likely to happen. The explanation of these customs given by John was that they were all designed to magnify the importance of the father's sister. When Virsal was about to marry his aunt, John would have heaped all sorts of opprobrious epithets upon him, because he would not think him good enough, and John thought that the poroporo was merely a continuation of this practice after the marriage had actually taken place, its object being to magnify the importance of the father's sister by depreciating her husband. This explanation must be taken with the caution which is in my opinion necessary with all native explanations, but, though it may not be the ultimate explanation of the strange customs, it indicates very clearly the high estimation in which the father's sister is held. I may point out in passing that the man who is thus so unceremoniously treated is necessarily of the same veve as his tormenter; they will in the native terminology be sogoi.

We know far too little of the sociology of the part of Melanesia where the father's sister exercises this predominant role to allow any certain conclusions as to the origin of the various customs which I have described. The information obtained by me was merely the result of a brief visit, and doubtless some of the descriptions I have given will require some modification in detail on further investigation, though I have no doubt about their general accuracy. It was evident that even in the Banks' group there were definite variants in different islands in the