Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/15



Fijians having been ignorant of the art of writing, and possessing no native system of hieratics, nor even of picture-records, the seeker after leprosy-lore must turn to their songs and traditions if he wishes to learn what they knew in ancient times about this disease. Being a hybrid race, this source of information is less satisfactory and less far-reaching than are the myths and legends of the purer Polynesian stock, such as the Hawaiians, the Samoans, the Maories, and the Eastern Polynesians generally.

If we except what relates to their mythology and the observances connected with their heathen cult, any definite or truthlike traditional history of the Fijian people as a whole may be said to be non-existent, or almost so. Their records seldom carry them back beyond what was told to the oldest men and women living by their own parents and grandparents. But apart from their lack of recording power one may observe of the Fijians, as the late M. Darmsteter did of the Afghans, "Ils n'ont pas d'histoire parceque l'anarchie n'en a pas."

All the old people, toothless old fossils with grey or white