The Folk-Tales of the Kiwai Papuans. 83 



grovvs on the trunks of trees after rain, and made the boy's ears of it. His eye-lids vvere closed 

 at first for some time, but the kangaroo rubbed them open. 



In order to teach the boy to walk the kangaroo went auay a fevv steps and then told 

 him to come, calling out, „/öwo giei. You junip, you come." She named the boy Javågi. At first 

 he jumped like a kangaroo with both feet together (this is called javdgi by the bushmen), hut 

 gradualiy he learnt to walk properly. 



One night when the boy was dreaming, the kangaroo came to him and taught him the 

 use of gdinoda, saying, „You keep him that thing good. Suppose you plant him taro, any kind 

 kaikai, you eut him little bit pièce belong gdnioiùi, put him inside that kaikai, he grow good. Leaf 

 belong gamoda you chew him, spit him on top along garden. Nighttime j^ou drink gdiiioda, next 

 day you go shsh (make water) on top garden." ^Xnother night the kangaroo taught him to make 

 a bow and arrows. As the boy had no stone axe he was taught to eut off the wood by sawing 

 it through with a rope twisted of young bamboo, and he made his bovv-string of split rattan as 

 some bushmen do even now. The arrow-heads were made of palm-wood and secured to the 

 shafts with pièces of string. He had no proper adigo (arm-guard) but used a curled bamboo leaf 

 instead. 



Once when Javågi was sav\'ing a pièce of wood in tw'o with his bamboo rope the wood 

 caught fire. The boy was at lirst much frightened, but in the night „his mother" (the kangaroo) 

 came and said, „That good thing belong you, fire. ^'ou no fright, you cook him kaikai along that 

 thing, you no kaikai raw." Some bushmen still make fire in that vvay. 



When the bow and arrows were ready the boy went and shot a busli-rat and in the night 

 the kangaroo appeared to him and commended his dexterity saying, „That fish (food, meat) belong 

 you, that bush-fish. Everything he come up along road, sit down (comes past or stops on the 

 path), that thing you shoot him, kaikai. Shoot him snake too, shoot iguana, pigeon (birds in 

 general)." ^ One day the boy shot a kangaroo, carried the animal home, and cooked it without 

 reflecting that „mother, father me shoot him, them fellow been make me". After eating the flesh 

 he feil down dead, and his spirit went away and roamed about all över the country. As time pas- 

 sed worms bred in the eyes, ears, and anus of the dead body. Finally a kangaroo came and spät 

 a certain „poison-wood" över the boy recalling him to life. The kangaroo eut off a small pièce of 

 its taii, that was to serve as a „medicine" b\' means of which the bo}' might transform himself 

 into a kangaroo if he wanted to kill any body secretly, and he was also given „medicines" to 

 enable him to assume the form of a snake, a pig, or a hawk. The kangaroo taught Javågi many 

 secret methods of killing a man. When the boy woke up he knevv that he was forbidden to eat 

 kangaroo meat, and thought to himself, „Oh, kangaroo been make me, that's father belong me, 

 kangaroo. Thats why I been dead, I kaikai kangaroo. Next time I no kaikai." Since then none 

 of the bushmen ever eat kangaroo, although their women do. Only when practising certain kinds 

 of sorcery will a bushman eat a little kangaroo meat and human t]esh together, which causes 

 him to become „eranky", „make him body wild, he go kill man". 



Javågi rambled about in the bush, shooting snakes, rats, cassowaries, and pigs. As he 

 had no house, he camped every night in a différent place, and after lighting a fire in the evening, 

 he cooked the game which he had killed during the day. „What place he come sundown, he fall 

 down, he sleep along grass." Thus he was wandering över the country, giving names to the 

 N:o 1. 



