Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/212

Rh it through the head, with which (not in the statement quoted, but usually) is associated the idea of an effusion of blood, first to the head and then into the abdomen.

As to how the transportation is actually accomplished opinions vary: there are natives who imagine that the older spirit carries the baby either in some sort of receptacle—a plaited coconut basket or a wooden dish—or else simply in her arms. Others say candidly that they do not know. But the active control of another spirit is essentially important. When natives say that the children are "given by a baloma," that "a baloma is the real cause of childbirth," they refer always to this controlling spirit (as we might call it), and not to the spirit baby itself. This controlling spirit usually appears in a dream to the woman about to be pregnant (see ch. viii, sec. i). As Motago'i, one of my best informants, volunteered: "She dreams her mother comes to her, she sees the face of her mother in a dream. She wakes up, and says: 'Oh, there is a child for me.

Frequently a woman will tell her husband who it was that brought the baby to her. And the tradition of this spiritual godfather or godmother is preserved. Thus the present chief of Omarakana knows that it was Bugwabwaga, one of his predecessors in office, who gave him to his mother. My best friend, Tokulubakiki, was a gift to his mother from her kadala, mother's brother. Tokulubakiki's wife received her eldest daughter from her mother's spirit. Usually it is some maternal relative of the prospective mother who bestows the gift; but it may be her father, as in Tomwaya Lakwabulo's statement. Rh