Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/312

 290 The Poetry of the Khvai Papuans.

one text has been sung long enough, he starts another. Anybody may join immediately, but if it is a song which the people do not know well, they generally let him sing it once alone and come in when he begins over again, or as soon as they think they know it. This kind of singing characterizes the mado, barari, and other dances, and forms part of the madia, vioguni, gacra, and other ceremonies, though these comprise a great variety of other rites as well. The text of each of the separate songs consists, as always, of a very few words, the interpretation of which is all the more difficult as no mimic gestures serve to throw light upon the significance of the words as in the previously mentioned dances. For a long time it seemed impossible to extract any certain meaning from the songs. I do not need to express my great satisfaction when at last I found that, although each separate " verse " hardly seemed to convey any definite thought, yet when put together they formed a series, supplementing each other and constituting a sort of narrative, naturally a very crude and fragmentary one, but unmistakably indicating the character of the songs. This gave my research a new interest, and gradually I collected quite a number of these serial songs, some of them comprising fifty verses and upwards. If the songs are very long, the singers only go through part of them at a time and continue them on subsequent days. We shall now consider some of the texts and the subjects they treat.

g. A Song of a Joiiniey from Adiri, the Spirit-land,

The most characteristic motive in serial songs is to begin with an allusion to Adiri, the land of the dead, which is thought to be situated far aw^ay-in the west where the sun and moon go down. The narrative then follows the coast in an easterly direction, until it reaches Dibiri on the eastern bank of the Fly river. The following song of a niado dance gives an example :

I. ^' Adiri bnsere Adiri boboriido sopu domidaimoy