United States or Myanmar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Pae herself, though hostess, could not eat till all the men were satisfied, for the tapu still holds, though without authority. Knives nor forks hindered our free onslaught upon the edibles, and there were cocoanut-shells beside each of us for washing our hands between courses, a usual custom.
If it be to thy mind to make tapu this house and all in it, who is there dare break it? To the white man Challi and his sons and daughters we meant no harm, though sweet to our bellies will be the flesh of those whom we have slain and who now roast for the feast.
Père Orens had been made tapu by Great Sea Slug, to whom he had explained the wonders of the world, and given many presents. To touch him was death, for Great Sea Slug had given him a feast and put upon him the white tapa, emblem of sacredness. Powerful was the god of Père Orens, and could work magic. In his pocket he carried always a small god, that day and night said "Mika!
Keane's cook, was once pulling an oar in an Atuona boat, when they spied a stranger in a canoe with some fish and a piece of tapu. The Atuona men cried upon him to draw near and have a smoke. These he must needs answer, as he must needs draw at the unwelcome pipe, his heart the while drying in his bosom.
Then, suddenly, as they caught sight of a branch of cocoanut leaf twisted in and around the woodwork of the gate, they stopped their maddened whirl as if by magic; and upon those behind them fell the silence of fear. "Thank God!" muttered Blount, "we are safe. They will not break Banderah's tapu."
This curious connection between sex and the preparation of food applied in many other cases. A woman making oil from dried cocoanuts was tapu as to sexual relations for four or five days, and believed that if did she sin, her labor would produce no oil. A man cooking in an oven at night obeyed the same tapu. I do not know, and was unable to discover, the origin of these prohibitions.
'Had you hidden a tapu? we may conceive him asking; and I cannot imagine the proprietor gainsaying it; and this is perhaps the strangest feature of the system that it should be regarded from without with such a mental and implicit awe, and, when examined from within, should present so many apparent evidences of design. We read in Dr.
"Once when a crowd of us went to visit 'im, 'e ran up this tr'il a'ead of us, and when we arrived all winded, blow me up a bloomin' gum-tree if 'e 'ad n't a mess of feis and breadfruit cooked for us." We came to a sign on the trail. "Tapu," it said, which means taboo, or keep away; and farther on a notice in French that the owner forbade any one to enter upon his land.
Doubtless the belief is strong; doubtless, with this weakly and fanciful race, it is in many cases strong enough to kill; it should be strong indeed in those who tapu their trees secretly, so that they may detect a depredator by his sickness.
There can, also, be no doubt that such men would generally be able to select the more attractive women. At present the chiefs of nearly every tribe throughout the world succeed in obtaining more than one wife. I hear from Mr. Mantell that, until recently, almost every girl in New Zealand who was pretty, or promised to be pretty, was tapu to some chief. With the Kafirs, as Mr.
Word Of The Day