206 JOHN FRASER. 



6. The word here is anava, and that is ' the club of a great warrior/ 

 handed down as an heirloom. So, on the principles of fetichism, this war- 

 club is supposed to be endued with the ' spirit ' of its warrior-owner, 

 and will fight disastrously when Lele'a pulls the string to set it a-going. 



7. ' Singing and shouting/ This incident is thoroughly Samoan ; the 

 plunge into the salt-water is the earliest enjoyment of the day. The 

 words 'fata tu ' are somewhat obscure ; they may mean ' bearers, stand/ 

 and may be the rallying cry of the plunderers, equivalent to ' stand 

 a,nd deliver/ 



8. ' Before the cloud/ If so, the subject of this story must be very 

 ancient. 



IV. — Chaos and Strife. 



A ' Solo.' 



Preface. — I am thoroughly convinced that this Story of Creation is 

 genuine, and in no degree coloured by infiltrations from Europe. When 

 Mr. Pratt went to Manuka in 1839, there were only two white men on 

 the island, and these were so brutish in mind and body, that a dog seemed 

 as likely to know and to communicate the Mosaic account of Creation as 

 they were. These men were despised by all, and even if they had pos- 

 sessed either the power or the inclination to talk about Creation, the 

 natives would not have cared to listen to tales from such as they, much 

 less adopt these tales into their own cosmogony. And there were no 

 Samoan Bibles then, nor could any of the natives read English. Then 

 again, I have the Samoan text in Mr. Powell's own hand writing, and on 

 it a declaration that it was given to him by an old official of Tau. Any 

 one who knows the natives will find it impossible to believe that such 

 men of honour as Fofo and Tauanuu were, and occupying, as they did, 

 so exalted positions in the islands, would allow their sacred records to be 

 corrupted by intermixture from abroad, or would recite them as genuine, 

 when they knew them to be corrupt. In the islands, such a thing would 

 be considered a disgrace to all. 



Any one who attentively examines the poem, will see that it has the 

 whole cast of genuineness and nationality, and that its very thoughts are 

 Samoan. The style is quite unlike prose ; it has the abruptness and 

 figurativeness of poetry, and of ancient poetry too ; for there are words 

 and expressions in it, which even Mr. Pratt, who knows Samoan better 

 than the Samoans themselves, found it hard to understand and explain, 

 except from the context and the composition of the words. 



I print the Samoan text for reference. I have sacrificed Mr. Powell's 

 rhymes in many places, in order to bring the translation closer to the 

 original. — Ed. 





The introductory stanzas seem to describe the condition of the waters 

 before the land was called up from the deep. In fact, this introduction 

 looks like a description of Chaos ; Tangaloa and the Tuli alone moved on 

 the face of the waters. If the poet who first composed these lines had 

 been an Englishman of our time, the critics might have accused him of 

 trying to imitate the lines on the ' Falls of Lodore.' — Ed. 



