Some Folk-Songs and Myths From Samoa
XV
XV.
3. Fiso and Ufi; ‘fiso’ is ‘sugar-cane,’ Saccharum floridulum, and ‘ufi’ is a ‘yam,’ Dioscorea.
Atafu—uli, ‘black’; mea, ‘reddish-brown’; tea, ‘bright, clear’; sina, ‘white.’ Atafu, in geography, is the Tokelau group, three hundred miles off from Samoa.
The Sun, ‘ La’; cognate to this word are the Melanesian words lah (Aneityum), ‘light,’ and lumi-lumi (Fiji), ‘to shine’; lahi (Motu, New Guinea), ‘flame,’ and na-laume (Aneityum), ‘flame.’ In the Aneityumese word lah, the h (aspirate) stands for k, and leads us to the Samoan lagi, ‘sky,’ lagi-mā, ‘bright heavens’; that again is connected with the New Britain word laga, ‘clear, bright.’ Cognates in the Aryan languages are Sk. raj, ‘to shine,’ ranj, ‘to glow,’ rakta, ‘red, pure, blood’ ( cf. Melanesian ra, ‘blood,’) Gr. lampas, ‘a torch,’ lampto, ‘I shine,’ Lat. luceo, ‘I shine,’ &c. The Egyptian Sun-god, as is well-known, is Ra.
Aso is ‘a daily offering of food to a chief.'
Lua-ma'a means ‘two stones.'
Taro; the gifts here were— magasiva, ‘the branching taro’; ‘ ata'ata, ‘a particular kind of fish'; tinā-manu, ‘a mother hen’; kava, the plant; tanoa, ‘a kava bowl'; ipu, ‘the kava cup’; to, ‘the strainer; lega, ‘turmeric.’ Fetau is the tree Calophyllum inophyllum; fasa is a ‘pandanus’ tree.
4. Taumafa, ‘eat,’ a chief's word; taute, ‘eat,’ a high chief's word.
Tava the name of a hard-wood tree.
5. Idols, ‘tupua’; these were not idols in our sense of the word, for, although the Samoans set up images, they never worshipped them; the ‘tupua’ here were merely amulets, charms, fetiches, which were carried about by the owner for his protection from evil influences.
Ua lā gaoi; lā, ‘they two,’ meaning Ui and Ala.
7. Tuli is a Polynesian bird; cf. ‘Solo o le Va,’ note 2. Fuia is a bird, the Sturnoides atrifusca. Miti is also a bird, the Lalage terat. Unga is a ‘soldier-crab.’ The Fuia is the Maori Huia, and that is the tutelary bird of one of the great Maori tribes.
Sina-a-Sa'u-mani, ‘Sina [the daughter] of Sa'u-mani.’ Here Mr. Powell says in a note, “This is Sina-Tauata, the daughter of Sa'u-mani. There were two Sa'u-manis, namely, Sa'u-mani aitu ( aitu, ‘spirit’), a widely known man, and Sa'u-mani ali'i ( ali'i, ‘chief’). The latter was the son of Le-Fe'e-mai-lalo, ‘the Octopus from below.’ His wife was Si'i-si'i-mane'e; she bore Sina who became the wife of Tangaloa-a-Ui.“
Fanonga means ‘destruction’; Asi-asi-o-lagi, ‘he who visits the sky'; Lele, ‘there.'