Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/334

 1 2 The Pochy of the Kkvai Papuans.

I. Poetical Ideas.

The question arises whether in Papuan folklore we can find any signs of poetical ideas.

The natives are fond of similes and use them frequently in their folklore ; we often come across passages which seem to convey a poetical thought.

In one of the tales it is stated that several men once danced before a girl in order to find out whom she would prefer. Each one wanted to make her smile at him. The dance, however, ended in a fight, during which the girl ran away and went up to heaven, where she remained. Flickerings of lightning, fitfully gleaming .in the sky, are her smile.

Another tale, of a comic nature, relates how everything, the sea included, once laughed at a certain incident, and, the narrative continues, "sea he laugh still," referring to the undulating waves of the sea.

When the Daru people once retuned from Masingara, where many of them had been killed, they saw how the sky was very red at sunset. According to the tale" the men associated the colour of the sky with the blood of their slain brothers and sang, — " Datidai kibiiia Daiidai kiimka k?iruka viataiba kumka gaum rupiiradara." (" Along Daudai [the name of the country] sky he red from blood belong dead man.")

We need not now enter into the question how far, if at all, the natives consciously use such similes. Whatever our views as to the existence of poetical ideas in the native tales, we cannot but recognise in the folklore of these Papuans one of the many instances in which amid a rude culture there appear the first sporadic beginnings of pheno- mena properly belonging to a higher civilization.

In some cases a real sentiment is unmistakably reflected in the native folklore. When the Mawata tribe left their old home and went westward to their present, village, one