GAMES
While ceremonial dancing takes the place both of theatrical shows and of
sports with the Fijians, there are two national games that have held
their own, and a number of amusements which may be briefly enumerated.
_Veiyama_ was a sham fight among children, in which serious injuries
sometimes resulted, and, as they have no longer the example of their
elders, it is now very rarely played. A swing consisting of a rope tied
to a high branch with a loop for the foot, formerly very popular, has
now also fallen into disuse. The children now play hide-and-seek, and a
few impromptu games, without prescribed rules, and with the warm water
on the beach to sport in, and the school dances to practise, they do not
feel the want of them. They have no toys except miniature canoes, which
they make for themselves as they want them.
_Veimoli_, or pelting with oranges, is played both by children and young
men. The skill consists in dodging the orange, which is thrown at short
distance and with full force, and their activity in dodging is so
extraordinary that it has given rise to the myth that Fijians could
avoid a bullet by dodging at the flash of the gun.
[Pageheader: A DANGEROUS ROMP]
The _there_, or foot-race, was always run on some occasion such as the
first voyage of a canoe, or the digging of a plantation, for a prize
offered by the owner. In my first voyage in a canoe I had had built at
Fort Carnarvon we found a crowd of young men waiting for us on the
river-bank, decked in streamers, and shouting a sort of shrill war-cry.
My men declared it was a _there_, and a bale of _masi_ (at my expense)
was hastily unpacked, and a streamer of the cloth fastened to a stick.
With this one of the men landed, some two hundred yards lower down, and
ran at topmost speed with the whole rabble baying at his heels. The man
who caught him and tore the flag from him received the bale, which he
afterwards divided out among the others.
The _veisanka_ was a sort of wrestling match between men and women, who
met at the top of a steep hill, and, having closed, a couple would roll
down the hill together. It was a rough sport, resulting often in a
sprain, and it has now been discouraged by the missionaries.
There were also the _veitenki-vutu_ (throwing the vutu), a fruit, which
from its buoyancy is used as a float for fishing nets; the
_veikalawa-na-sari_, a sort of "hop, skip and jump"; and a kind of
skittles, played with stones. All these have been abandoned.
The _veisolo_ is a custom rather than a game, and it is still
occasionally practised in Western Vitilevu. The last case I heard of
occurred in 1887, and some of my armed constables were the victims. They
put up in a small village in the Nandi district, and hardly had the food
been brought to them when the house was beset by a number of girls bent
on mischief. The traditional object of the besiegers is to disperse
their visitors and take away the food, but the real motive is to have a
romp. The men are expected to be gentle with their assailants, and
either to take them captive or lay them gently on the ground, but in
this instance they were greatly outnumbered, and all the men of the
village being absent, they were really in fear for their lives, for they
had heard stories of men dying from the violence of these Amazons. They
barricaded the door, and, having succeeded in wresting one of the
pointed sticks that were thrust at them through the grass walls, for a
time prevented any of the women from getting in. Their assailants then
became infuriated, and shrieked for a fire-stick with which to fire the
thatch, and one of the men holding the door thought it well to take a
hostage. So he drew back, and a strapping girl bounced into the hut.
Then followed a scene which suggests that there is a sexual
significance in the custom, for the girl was stripped and cruelly
assaulted in a manner not to be described. The women outside were
actually setting fire to the house, and would have burned their village
to the ground had not the men, alarmed by the uproar, returned from
their plantations in time to put a stop to it. The guests beat a hasty
retreat under cover of the darkness, and, curiously enough, no complaint
of their behaviour to the girl was made, probably because it was custom.
The two national games that have held their own are _veitinka_ and
_lavo_. The _tinka_ or _ulutoa_ is a reed four feet long fitted into a
pointed head carved out of ironwood, and about four inches long. On the
outskirts of every village in Western Vitilevu is the _tinka_ ground, a
level stretch of bare earth over one hundred yards long by ten wide. The
_ulutoa_ is thrown thus: the thrower rests the end of the reed on the
ball of the middle finger of the right hand, and, with the arm extended
behind him and the point of the _ulutoa_ on the level of his armpit, he
takes a short run and discharges the weapon with the full force of the
right side of his body. It flies through the air for the first thirty
yards with a low trajectory, and touching the ground with its smooth
surface, skims along it, barely touching the earth until its force is
spent. The longest throw wins the game. The heavy head and the light
shaft make the _ulutoa_ an attractive missile, but the unpractised
European finds the knack of throwing straight very difficult to acquire.
Almost every fine evening finds the youths of the village at practice on
the _tinka_ ground, and on feast-days challenges are sent out to the
neighbouring villages and matches are played. Good players regard their
ironwood heads much as golfers do their favourite driver, but they cut
the reed shafts from the roadside as they want them.
[Pageheader: THE GAME OF _LAFO_]
_Lavo_ has a curious history. It was originally a Fijian game, and was
played with the _lavo_, the flat round seeds of the _walai_ creeper
(_Mimosa Scandens_), which from its shape has given its name to all
European coins, for the dollars recovered from the wrecked brig _Eliza_
in 1809 were used for the game in preference to the seeds. The Tongan
immigrants learned the game and carried it back with them to Tonga,
under the name of _lafo_, where, the seeds being scarce, they
substituted discs of cocoanut-shell, which were a great improvement. In
Tonga it flourished exceedingly; the rules were improved, special sheds
were erected for it, and valuable property changed hands in the stakes.
Meanwhile it had died out in Fiji, and when it revived through the
influence of the Tongans domiciled in the group, it was in its Tongan
form with cocoanut-shells.
I have described it elsewhere in detail,[104] and I will here only
indicate the rules. A board is made with mats about fifteen feet long,
slightly raised at the sides so as to form a sloping cushion. The four
players sit, two at each end, so arranged that the partners are divided
by the length of the board, and each is sitting beside an adversary.
Each player throws five discs alternately with his opponent, and the
object is to skim the disc so as to be nearest the extreme edge, and to
knock off an adversary's disc that may be nearer.
The under edge of the disc is oiled with a rag, and a very nice judgment
is required to impart a "break" from the cushion so as to topple off an
opponent's disc and leave your own in its place. In scoring it is not
unlike tennis. You begin at six and count to ten, and the best out of
five makes the set. I have taken part in many a match, and can testify
to the excellence of the game and the skill that may be acquired with
practice.
The men amuse themselves sometimes with a game of guessing. One flings
out his hand suddenly, and the other guesses the position of his
fingers.
The chiefs sometimes play practical jokes by punning
(_vakarimbamalamala_). Thus as the word _ulaula_ means both to thatch a
house and to throw short clubs at one another, the Mbau chiefs send to
their vassals to come and _ulaula_. They come expecting to thatch a
house, and find themselves received with a volley of throwing clubs.
Story-telling is the principal amusement on long evenings, and the best
story-tellers are professionals. The most successful are tales full of
exaggeration of the Munchausen order, and these, especially when unfit
for polite ears, provoke roars of laughter. The story-tellers have now
begun to draw upon European literature for their inspiration, and the
result throws a very instructive light upon the Fijian's sense of
humour.
I once gave a Fijian the outline of Mr. Rider Haggard's _She_, and a few
nights later I chanced to hear his version of it delivered to a
spellbound native audience. The author would not have enjoyed it, for
the central figure was the native servant of the travellers, who, it
will be remembered, was incidentally "hot-potted" by an unfriendly
tribe. This servant had become an Indian coolie, talking such broken
Fijian as coolies talk in a sort of nasal whine. The narrator enlarged
upon his skinniness, his absence of calf, his cowardice, and many other
qualities in the coolie which the Fijians hold in contempt. There were
endless interpolated dialogues, and the coolie argued at great length
against the fate decreed for him, but when the red-hot pot was finally
on his head the story was drowned in shouts of appreciative laughter.
"She," being but a love-sick white woman, of course talked in "pidgin"
Fijian, but she had little more than a walking part. The professional
story-tellers are promised _nambu_, or fees in kind, by the audience as
an inducement.
Wherever a ground is within reach, and Europeans are at hand to organize
the game, the Fijians have taken keenly to cricket, though not to the
same extent as the Tongans. They have a natural aptitude for fielding
and throwing up, but their idea of batting and bowling are still in the
elementary stage, where force is thought better than skill. It was,
however, possible to send a native team on tour through the Australian
colonies, under the captaincy of Ratu Kandavulevu, King Thakombau's
grandson.
[Pageheader: TRIBAL FEELING IN SPORTS]
The native constabulary took keenly to Rugby football for a time, but as
they wore no boots the sick-list after every match was unduly swelled
with men suffering from injured toes, and the game was not encouraged.
In a temperature of 80 degrees in the shade, where passions are apt to
rise with the thermometer, football is unlikely to become a national
game.
English athletic sports are held occasionally at native meetings, but so
strong does tribal feeling still run, that it is unsafe to encourage
wrestling matches and tugs-of-war between rival tribes, such contests
being apt to degenerate into free fights. The instinct of the weaker
side is to run for a club with which to wipe out the disgrace.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 104: _The Indiscretions of Lady Asenath._]