Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/415

 mishaps, the defection of his handsome wife, who left him in order to join her late sister's husband, Manimuwa, a young, healthy and handsome man of Wakayse (see ch. vi, sec. i). She often visited her sister, and during the latter's last illness she stayed for a long time with her brother-in-law. The issue was obvious: Manimuwa and Dakiya formed an attachment and entered upon an illicit intrigue, which ended in her joining him. Magic was blamed for all the trouble. Even Bagido'u himself, the deserted husband, would say that she was a good woman, but that this bad man had first performed evil magic to estrange her from her husband, and afterwards love magic to seduce her. Dakiya, in fact, was quoted as the classical instance of the power of magic. "Magic made the mind of Dakiya; Manimuwa only remains in her mind." The comic side of this otherwise sad story was that Bagido'u had the reputation of being the greatest expert in the magic of love. Of course, my informants were ready with explanations of the theoretical conundrums involved.

Finally to return once more to a story which is a case in point: the tragedy of Namwana Guya'u's expulsion from the village by the kinsmen of Mitakata (see ch. i, sec. 2). On my return after more than a year's absence from the Trobriands, I met Namwana Guya'u in one of the southern villages. His hatred of Mitakata was as implacable as ever. When I asked him what had happened to his enemy, he told me that the wife of Mitakata, Orayayse, had rejected him (see pl. 25). She was, as a matter of fact, the first cousin of her husband's enemy, and I knew that her husband had sent her away for