Page:Papuan Fairy Tales.djvu/17



following fairy tales were collected chiefly from the natives of a small village on the N.E. coast of Papua. I have known these people for nine years, and for part of that time lived alone amongst them in a little mission bungalow.

Sometimes when seated on the verandah, with a group of children around me, I would entice an old woman to narrate for our amusement some such story as the adventures of the Turtle and the Wallaby, or the cruel fate which befell the child left to the care of the Talking Bananas.

Nothing loth, the old crone would patter out the tale which she had heard from her grandmother, who in turn had learnt it at some greybeard's knee. There was generally a little incantation or magic verse in each story, and this was invariably chanted to an air which one might call the fairy tale motif, for it appeared with great regularity, linked however to very diverse words.

In the village at night, when the "moon was dead," young married couples sitting in the dark would tell these stories turn and turn about to each