308 Gunnar Landtman. 



going to swim the vvoman stepped över the stone. No delivery took place, for the stone prevented 

 the child from being bom, and the woman died. (Kâii<u, Ipisi'a). 



THE TWO SISTERS WHO FOUGHT ÖVER A CRAB. 



255. Two sisters lived together at Sagéru and spent their time fishing with a basket 

 which they lowered into the water and hoisted up when the fish and crabs had gathered into it. 

 Once the elder sister caught a large crab and tying up the pincers put it in the canoe and brought 

 it home. The next day she went to make sago, and in her absence the younger sister cooked the 

 crab and ate it. „Who kaikai my crab?*' asked the elder sister on her return home. She was 

 very angry, seized her digging stick and hit the younger girl on the head. They began to fight 

 so fiercely that they kicked the firebrands over the floor, soon the whole house was in fiâmes, 

 and the two girls perished. (Kåku, Ipisi'a). 



A. The two girls lived by themselves, and once one of them in the absence of her sister ate a 

 crab which belonged to the lalter, alleging that it had escaped. They began to fight and set fire to 

 the house as in the hrst version. (M;înu, Ipisîa). 



B. The large crab caught by the elder sister was about to escape in the night when the 

 younger sister happened to corne and tied it up again. She kept it for herself and ate it, and when 

 her elder sister asked for her crab she pretended not to know anything about it. The elder sister found 

 the legs of the crab and guessed the truth. They foughl, set fire to the house, and died in the 

 fiâmes. (Tâmetàme, Ipisia). 



THE BROTHERS WHO QUARRELLED, AND THE YOUNGER OF WHOM WENT AWAY 



(no. 256 — 259; cf. Index, The Family). 



256. Two brothers lived together in Manâvete; Miimaréva was the name of the elder 

 brother who was married, and Sâbaréva the younger. The latter went to his brother's garden 

 and stole yams, and Miîmaréva's wife on noticing that food had been taken avvay said to herself, 

 „Oh, my yam ! who been pull him out?" On returning home she saw Sâbaréva occupied with 

 roasting some yams and recognized them as the same from her own garden. A little later she 

 went down to the beach where the young men had begun to play paru (a kind of hockey), and 

 with her digging stick she hit Sâbaréva on the head, at the same time calling out, „Ycu no go 

 steal my yam !" The humiliated Sâbaréva began to cry, and when some of the men wanted to 

 attend to his wound he sent them away and said, „I no want you make him, I leave you." 



In the night when the people were asleep the boy thought to himself, „What piace I go? 

 I go stop another place." He put some yams, bananas, and coconuts in his basket and went 

 away into the bush. After a long wandering he came to a place where the ground was high 

 and dry, and there he built a hut to live in. An aléraro (ferocious mythical lizard) lived in 

 the same place. 



ïom. XLVII. 



