Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/307

 The Poetry of the Kiwai Papuans. 285

Each of the songs of the various dances comprises only a very few words, which are repeated over and over again. When one text has been sung for a while, the singers leave it and take up another. It proves much more difficult than one would anticipate to obtain the exact texts of the songs. In singing the natives generally pronounce the words so hastily as to make them almost incomprehensible, and they modify them freely by abbreviating or by adding extra syllables. It is generally with the utmost difficulty that a man can repeat correctly in speaking the text which he sings fluently. The extreme briefness of the texts tends further to obscure their real meaning. Even when one has found out what the separate words mean, the sense of such fragmentary and vague expressions is far from clear. But it is quite evident that in a great many cases not even the singers themselves understand the meaning of their own songs. They have learnt them by repeating them after other singers, but without troubling themselves about the meaning of the words. The texts of some of the cere- monial songs possibly contain old words which are not properly understood by the present generation. But the natives are also fond of taking over songs which they have heard among other tribes, and they often borrow them without knowing the original language. They simply copy the dances and words, but, in spite of their natural clever- ness in mimicry, both tunes and words must become more or less changed, and much more the interpretation which they may give to the songs.

An instance of this occurred during my stay in the country. I went once with a number of natives from Mawata on the coast to Budji, a couple of days' journey further west, where the people speak quite a different language, which my Mawata men did not understand. We stayed at Budji for two nights, on each of which our hosts held a dance which greatly interested the Mawata natives. On our way back they tried to imitate the Budji dances