Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/173

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Samoan Tales.
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refused it. Talingamaivalu called out: "It is her brother." Sina said: "Talingamaivalu, this chief desires to eat of my plantation. It takes three months to reach it." Talingamaivalu replied: "Well, what about it?" The woman said: "This chief has many gods. When you go, do not walk, but slide along. When you pull up taro, do not pull it up with your hands, but pull it up with your toes. If you hunt a pig, hunt a wild shy pig. When you draw salt water, bale it up with a net. When you rub a light, rub it on a banana. When you climb a cocoa-nut, go up with your feet upwards." Talingamaivalu said: "Well, what about it? The prohibitions of the gods of Nō."[1]

Then he prepared the oven of food. He chased a pig and did not catch it; he chased a fowl and did not catch it. Then Talingamaivalu grew angry. He prepared his oven of food. Sina and Tingilau ran away. They stretched out the mosquito-screen, and under it they placed the mallet for [preparing] native cloth and the kingfisher of Tutiula. Talingamaivalu went and said: "Woman Sina!" Sina did not answer. Then he went to awake her. She did not answer. He lifted up the screen, and the kingfisher jumped out and struck the eye of Talingamaivalu; it was blinded. Again he lifted it, and again the kingfisher jumped up and struck the other eye and blinded it. Talingamaivalu cried out: "This woman shall not live." Talingamaivalu then threw himself down. The woman was not there. Then he bit the mallet and broke his teeth. The kingfisher[2] cried out: "Tingilau and Sina have run away."

  1. Abbreviation of Pinono.—G. P.
  2. The kingfisher was regarded as the incarnation of Sa-fulu-sa (of the sacred feather) and of Taenia (glittering black), both of them war gods. (Turner,' Samoa, pp. 48, 54.)