Selected Arapesh Myths

The myths which I present here were, with two exceptions (Nos. 6 and 17), all narrated by Unabelin of Liwo. Nine of these he received from another Liwo man, Siakaru, whom he brought with him to refresh his memory; the rest he told without assistance. With the exception of stylized exclamations, snatches of song, and words referring to special Arapesh cultural usages, pidgin English was used throughout. I recorded them verbatim without the necessity of slowing the narrator up, as is imperative in taking down texts of a difficult native language. Doctor Fortune collected a large body of texts of Arapesh myths, many of which have been published. 1 My smaller series may be profitably compared with his larger text series in several respects. Mine are versions given by Unabelin, who was a typical Arapesh, except for his greater intensity of emotional and intellectual interest. Doctor Fortune’s versions were, for the most part, dictated by Mindibilip, a less typical Arapesh, who emphasized different things. Unabelin was interested in historical sequence, the fragile thread of human tradition which may be snapped or altered by individual acts so that each becomes freighted with extra significance, while Mindibilip was more interested in material details connected with food and with surface brutalities. Unabelin, while loading his tales with affect directed towards the dead, towards tradition, towards the chance that it might have happened some other way, also told them gently and tended to draw the sting of a harsh plot. Mindibilip tended to emphasize the harsher elements in a plot. The two versions of The Woman’s Revenge on the Man who raped Her (This series, No. 30; Doctor Fortune’s series, No. XXXII) stress this contrast very strongly. Both of my narrators, Unabelin and Wabe, were concerned in the localization of the tale, or at least in translating it into familiar terms and in comparing the characters in age or social position with persons whom I knew. Mindibilip, younger, further removed from his village and less involved in the cultural scene around him, did not show this tendency to the same degree.