ABSTRACT
The ancestor Tree is rent asunder; it is fallen across the land of Matang in Samoa. I will take its flowers for ornaments under the noonday. Its time is come. The woman Kabaraaki comes from Angitane in the depths; she has a necklet of porpoise teeth, Te Ukukaamereu. I will plunge down and take it in the secret places of Tewenei; I will have a necklet of porpoise teeth, Te Ukukaamereu. I will cut them to pieces; I will tear them apart; I will pierce them through with my barbed spear. My spear is lifted from its place on my canoe. Whence came my canoe? Its sail is furled in the lee of the Maneaba at Taribo. The people of Uurantewenei hold its stem; the people of Temotu and Rurutei give it welcome. They spread the tidings—Alas! A great defeat; the warriors lie slain far away. The pursuit is hot in the wake of the flyers; they fall dead on the ground. Low lie they—o—a—ee—aa—atie. Every mythology has its trickster god—its Pan, its Krishna, its Robin Goodfellow. Gilbertese mythology is no exception; Na Areau the Younger—also called Na Areau Te Kikinto (mischief maker)—is described in tales from every island as cunning, cruel, lustful and vain, but marvellously skilled in sorcery and the arts of war. Like Pan he was uncouth in habit and appearance—a stinking black dwarf with frizzly hair and flapping ears. But this did not make him any less formidable; his brutality and cunning against the fierce Urua fish, for example, made him a hero of the people of Baanaba. 1 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315017907/b4753ac3-e3ec-470e-b21f-25c2512d54b9/content/figu4_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
My father always thought of Na Areau as representing the original negrito pygmy who was found in Melanesia by voyagers from the west when they arrived, and with whom they fought incessantly. He felt that many tales in which he figured could have been allegorical representations of actual happenings—wars, migrations, massacres—which still remained dimly in the collective memory of the race. In a footnote to one of his papers he says …
