Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/211

] It is possible to discover the deceit, but the discovery is often made too late. In Araga the changed mae may be known by the skin under the neck, which remains unchanged. It was only lately that a youth died at Vathuqe in that island who had been enticed by a changeling girl; he saw her neck and came back and told his people; they tried the proper remedy of smoke in vain. There is another test used in that island; the suspected temptress is induced to sit upon a nettle-tree, and is convicted by her ignorance of its character. In the Banks' Islands a young man, as one has related his experience to myself, coming back from his fishing on the rocks towards sunset, will see a girl with her head bedecked with flowers beckoning to him from the slope of the cliff up which his path is leading him; he recognizes the countenance of some girl of his own or a neighbouring village; he stands and hesitates, and thinks she must be a mae; he looks more closely, and observes that her elbows and knees bend the wrong way; this reveals her true character, and he flies. If a young man can strike the temptress with a dracæna leaf she turns into her own shape and glides away a snake. At Gaua, Santa Maria, a man met one of these standing or variegated snakes, as they call them, mae tiratira, valeleas, on the beach at night in the form of a woman of the place. Seeing by her reversed joints what she was, he offered to go to the village and bring her money. When he returned he found her waiting for him in her proper form as a mae; he scattered money upon her back, and she went off with it into the sea. More lately in the same place a young man just returned from 'labour' in Queensland, saw one of these in the form of a young married woman of his village. She turned into the stalk of a creeper, as in that island it is believed that these creatures do. It is believed also that if the man can cut the creeper short he will live; this young man accordingly broke this vine off short and got safe home. But since that time where has been something in the night disturbing those who sleep in the same club-house with him, and he has confessed that it is this snake-woman who comes to him in the night;