THE FIJIAN NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS—THIRD NIGHT.—ELOPEMENT OF A GODDESS.
We had yet a third story-telling entertainment, the leading points of
which I well remember. On this occasion Lolóma was the chief narrator. I
had drawn largely on my recollections of Lempriere’s classical
dictionary, and thought I had fairly distanced the efforts of the
cannibal poets, with the loves of the Olympian gods and goddesses, but I
found that the company had local legends of equal interest. Lolóma
discoursed eloquently on a love theme with an elopement for its central
incident, and I was bound to confess that the conduct of the hero was
worthy of Paris himself.
This love-song of Lolóma’s is now done into English for the first time.
The author’s style is imitated more closely, and the lines are more
literally translated than was possible, or desirable, with other
compositions which have been worked into these pages. The poet’s theme
is the “Elopement of a Hero-god with a Goddess.” The artist’s laconic,
business-like and elliptical lines, necessitate an introduction to these
high personages, and a few words explaining what, by some readers, may
be accepted as an addition to their knowledge of the manners and customs
of Cannibal-land.
Bulitaundúa the “first-crowned,” or “sole-crowned,” or “chief one,” was
a hero-god of comparatively small importance, but great pretensions. The
tribe acknowledging him as its tutelar god called him “Chief of Gods,” a
title which none but the tribe in question could show that he had any
claim to. By all the legendary accounts, he must have been a sort of
Beelzebub, for, when the gods assembled in council, he sat on an
elevated seat or dais, above them all—
“By merit raised
To that bad eminence.”
His food was the wind. As a god, he was far from being wholly given to
wrong-doing. He used to promise—or his priests did for him—that the
trees should yield their fruit in great abundance. When the season came,
he was in the habit of taking these ripe fruits, which he called his
“play-things,” and tossing them hither and thither for his amusement,
over all the lands of his people. Thus sketched by the poet, we may
imagine him standing by an inexhaustible pile of fruits, into which,
ever and anon, he plunges his hands, awful in their wondrous breadth and
capacity, with which, like a giant sower sowing seed, he scatters
broadcast on all the trees, his ripe and luscious gifts.
Such a god as this could not but gain a place in the poetry of
Cannibal-land. But the poet who has enshrined his memory in verse, has
chosen no such theme as that of “Universal fruit-scattering,” to
perpetuate his name with, but has simply placed him before his country
as a great love-making hero, seeking, wooing, winning, and carrying off
a goddess of matchless beauty.
From the oldest traditions of the place, it appears that at Vúya—once
the head town of an ancient kingdom of power—there lived a lovely lady,
so lovely indeed, and beautiful, that her name was named on every
island. She was in truth a goddess, but all the gods of note, except
Bulitaundúa, had sought her hand, and sought in vain.
Now Bulitaundúa lived a long way off on another island, the largest of
the group; and unfortunately too, he was a landsman, knowing little or
nothing of sailing. He was, however, an expert rower, in the long,
narrow canoes used for river work. But who would venture to sea in a
craft of that sort.
Certainly none but Bulitaundúa, who determined at all risks to cross the
ocean to Vúya, distant some 80 miles, and there, should he ever reach
the place alive, to offer his hand and heart to the goddess of
world-wide renown. His ability to eat the wind may account for the total
absence of fear in this, to all seafaring men, foolhardy attempt. At the
time of his leaving home, a stiff breeze was blowing from the East, but
whether he ate it all up or not, the bard does not tell us; he only says
that when the hero reached the sea there was a great calm. But he says
this in such a way as to leave the impression on our minds that the
wonderful and necessary deed was actually and instantaneously done.
In the first stanza Bulitaundúa is represented as talking to himself.
Coming out of his house, and looking round, he finds that the usual
“trade” breeze is blowing, and hopes it may prove just the breeze to
help him over to the fair lady’s land. In the second stanza he is in his
canoe, paddling away down the river, and singing, as he glides along, a
song in which are mentioned the most prominent points of land as they
come in sight ahead. In the third stanza he reaches the ocean, where, as
we are led to infer, finding the wind too strong, he causes a great
calm, and then, dashing bravely out, he pulls away for the “Great Land,”
where lives the object of all his hopes. The difficulties and dangers of
ocean passed, the undaunted hero joyfully prepares to land. As he poles
his canoe towards the beach, over what in that part of Fiji is a
shore-reef, and draws nearer and nearer to the home of the illustrious
goddess, he descries in the hills that form the immediate background of
the picture before him, a silvery waterfall, the dancing glories of
which greatly gladden his heart, especially as the thought impresses
itself strongly in his mind that such a fall can be no other than the
bathing-place of the “World’s Attraction.” In the fourth stanza, the
princess, hearing that a canoe has arrived, sends her maid in great
haste to see who the stranger can be. The girl, in wild astonishment at
the truly princely bearing of Bulitaundúa, bites her fingers and claps
her hands, which is one of the ways in which Fijian young ladies let
people know that they are exceedingly filled with wonder! On being
addressed by this maiden as “Lord-o’-the-Lands,” the princely
sailor-god, enquires naturally enough, and with a proper eye to
business, if what she says is true, “how would it be for him to be
crowned in that land also?” Whereupon the maiden’s surprise rushes
suddenly to a climax, and away she runs to her mistress to report the
stranger’s most astounding proposal. Now, the goddess goes to the beach
and interviews the newly-arrived hero, who, presently discovering that
he has given the inquisitive lady satisfactory answers to her queries,
“pops” the all-important question without further delay. The battle is
fought and won. It was a “bloodless victory.” And the poet deemed it as
fit a subject for the efforts of his genius as those victories which, if
he knew the way to write at all, he would have had to write with blood.
The goddess being now the hero’s own, he tells her to take her place,
where the lady’s place always is when rowing with her lord, namely,
“forward.” The short oars, or more correctly, paddles, in general use in
Cannibal-land, are in shape like flattened hearts, with small, round
smooth handles, about 4 feet in length. The wood of which they are made
is a very valuable one, known among the natives by the name of “vesi,”
and said to resemble the “green-heart” of India. It was a paddle of this
sort, the poet tells us, which the goddess used on the morning of her
elopement. The loving pair having been placed by the bard fairly on
their way home, the song concludes.
From other compositions which refer to this conquest, I subsequently
learned that a large family of gods and goddesses arose out of the happy
union. The names of some of these personages are worth recording for
their poetic character. They are:—“Parrakeet-Lord,” “Eight-Eyes,”
“Grass-flower-skirt,” _i.e._ the goddess whose skirt was made of the
flowers of grass;—and, last and most wonderful of all—“Spirit-skirt,” or
the goddess whose skirt was composed of spirits!
THE SONG.
“The easterly breeze is blowing fair,”—
Said Bulitaundúa[12] with gladsome air,
“My breeze, mayhap, for the Land o’ the fair!”
“Pull away from side to side,
Rolling below is the river-tide.
Hung out ahead is Screw-pine strand;
Pull away with a steady hand.
The other shore is the haunted land!
Pull away with a steady hand.
Pumice-stone isle looms up from the sea,
And the ‘Isle-of-Work’ is on the lee;
Pull away with a steady hand.”
Through the open reef to the great outside,
Rowed the god as he merrily cried,
“There’s a wondrous calm on all the land!
Pull away with a steady hand.”—
“Arrived at last at Vúya’s town,
Where the beautiful falls are leaping down!
The falls I ween, of Vúya’s Queen!”
“Maiden-in-waiting, go down to the reef,
A canoe is in, ’tis the voice of a chief!”
Biting her fingers, and clapping her hands,
The maid hail’d the chief as “Lord-o’-the-Lands!”
“Then what would you say,”—asked the fine grandee,
“If on this shore I crowned be?”
The maid ran back without further ado,
And the lady sped to the Lord’s canoe!
“What is the name of thy land?” she cried.
“Mine is a very long land!”—he replied,—
“Enquire of the flood and the ebbing tide!
Away from the sea, inland I abide.
My palace is called the Great Foundation!
And the houses are all like those of thy nation.
Then tell me at once, O child of the sea,
Wilt thou stay where thou art, or go with me?”
“In thy canoe I’ll go with thee!
My home at the dawn shall deserted be!”
“Then over the bow,”—said the god-like rower,
“Pull away with thy ‘Green-heart’ oar.”
Footnote 12:
Pronounced Boo-ly-town-doo-ah.