Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/378



native Stories or Folk-tales which follow are all of them, with the exception of the first, translated from the manuscripts written for me by natives of the various islands in which the stories are told. The first example was written down by the Rev. A. Penny at Florida, in the native language as he heard the story told. The translation is as accurate and literal in each case as I could make it; the detailed prolixity of a native narrative is very characteristic; and it is possible that, with the varying quality of the story-telling of the individual writers, there may appear something also of the different narrative style of the eastern and western groups of these islands of Melanesia. The value of truly native stories is beyond all question; they exhibit native life in the particular details which come in the course of the narrative, they are full of the conceptions which the native people entertain about the world around them, they show the native mind active in fancy and imagination, and they form a rich store of subjects for comparison with the folk-tales of other parts of the world. To the question how far those who tell and those who hear these stories believe them to be true it is hard to give an answer. To some extent they are believed, and to a great extent they are treated as flights of fancy. A story-teller warming to his subject, and with all that he relates pictured in his mind, very likely believes it all as he tells the tale; a story will be quoted to explain or confirm some statement,