Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/416

 political reasons. But Namwana Guya'u hinted that he had estranged her feelings from her husband by magic. Then he enlarged on the bad habits of his enemy. "He tries to get hold of girls and they refuse him"; yet he had to inform me that Mitakata had married Ge'umwala, a young and pretty girl. "Boge, ivakome minana; magila imasisi deli; m'tage biva'i, ipayki — matauna ibi'a." "Already he gave magic to her to eat; her desire to sleep together; but to marry she refused — he took her by force." Here then the value of the success was actually minimized by its attribution to love magic; and the consent to marriage, which cannot be won by any such impersonal means, was denied to his enemy by Namwana Guya'u!

In the Trobriands all positive magic has a negative counterpart, in belief and theory at least, if not always in reality. The magic of health and disease is the clearest example, for, against every rite and spell which produces disease, there is a counter-magic which cures it. The positive magic of success, which accompanies each economic enterprise, always implies the existence of a negative preventive rite, which accounts for the possibility of failure in positive magic.

So it is not surprising to find that love-charms have to contend with a magic which acts in the opposite direction. This is the magic of estrangement and oblivion, a department of black magic, generically called bulubwalata,