A Motif-Index of Traditional Polynesian Narratives
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A MOTIF-INDEX OF TRADITIONAL POLYNESIAN NARRATIVES by Bacil F. Kirtley University of Hawaii Press Honolulu 1971 Open Access edition funded by the National Endow- ment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC- ND 4.0), which permits readers to freely download and share the work in print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes, so long as credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Creative Com- mons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. Open Access ISBNs: 9780824884079 (PDF) 9780824884086 (EPUB) This version created: 1 October, 2019 Please visit www.hawaiiopen.org for more Open Access works from University of Hawai‘i Press. Copyright © 1971 by University of Hawaii Press All rights reserved INTRODUCTION The present work analyzes and classifies traditional Polynesian myths, tales, and legends according to a system developed by Professor Stith Thompson in his Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955–58). In matters of form and style, consequently, Professor Thompson’s work has served, with a few modifications explained below, as the pattern for this work. Since Professor Thompson describes thoroughly the classification rationale of a motif-index in his introduction, and since a general synopsis of the overall scheme precedes the main body of the present text, the plan of this study need not be discussed.1 Rather, the concept of a “motif,” the unit employed as a basis for the cataloguing should be explained. A motif is the smallest element in a tale having the power to persist in tradition. In order to have this power it must have something unusual and striking about it. Most motifs fall into three classes. First are the actors in a tale—gods, or unusual animals, or marvelous creatures like witches, ogres, or fairies, or even conventionalized human characters like the favorite youngest child or the cruel stepmother. Second come certain items in the background of the action—magic objects, unusual customs, strange beliefs, and the like. In the third place there are single incidents—and these comprise the great majority of motifs. It is this last class that can have an independent existence and that may therefore serve as true tale-types. By far the largest number of traditional types consist of single motifs.2 The function of an index of motifs is to cite bibliographical sources of narratives containing these viable (often irreducible) story elements, and thus to provide the investigator of specific story ideas with comparative information. A motif-index, an impersonally and non-tendentiously selected catalogue of narrative details, documents systematically and objectively the emphases and the preoccupations of folk stories. Polynesian tales, if we may begin by elimination, show little interest in those themes which grew out of ethical contemplation. Narra tives do not reward virtue nor punish wickedness for the mere reason that these traits fall within these particular moral provinces. Humility, modesty, and forbearance are not in themselves often shown to be ideals of conduct. That kind of incident, so prominent in Eurasian materials, which celebrates wisdom or soundness and breadth of intel lectual perspective is generally absent from Oceanic tales. Neither do Polynesian narratives embody general reflec tions about the nature of life and society. Hence, several chapters of Professor Thompson’s Index, based to a large extent upon Eurasian texts, are represented feebly, two not at all, in this work. The motifs which would be categorized under these chapters seem to lie beyond the horizons of the Oceanic worldview. If Oceanic narratives rarely treat ideas issuing from abstract ethical concepts, this neglect does not indicate that the stories deal with only immediate physi cal phenomena, for Polynesians created an extremely elaborate cosmogony and cosmology—at least as complex as that of ancient Greece—compiled in several island groups by priestly specialists bent, apparently, upon reducing to the metaphor of their culture much of the imminent universe. The large size of Chapter A attests to the thoroughness with which they worked. And Chapter F, upon marvels and the marvelous, further indicates the rich vein of fantasy in Oceanic narratives. vi The equivalent in emphasis to Eurasian ethical interests occurs in Oceania in material indexed under Chapters G, K, Q, and S—chapters dominated by violence to a greater degree than are narratives in many other culture areas. The bloody tricks and retributions documented here are not, as they first appear, lavished entirely purposely and indiscriminately. True, ogres are stabbed, burned, poisoned, and hanged for no reason other than that they are ogres. Animals, or more usually fishes, mutilate each other thoroughly, and for no discernable cause or understandable motivation. Yet, when a “whale-brother” of a Polynesian chief is killed, the narrative evokes a frightful vengeance. The differ ence is that in the first two instances, the victims are outside the laws which apply to the immediate ethnic or allegiance group. The butts are disembodied marionettes of fantasy. Pacific islanders stole shamelessly from the early European navigators, while among themselves they were reported to observe conscientiously possession rights. Tribal obligations and ethics did not apply to strangers (animals, ogres, and the like), but the murder of a “whale-brother” demanded the formal vengeance urged by tribal custom. When magic (Chapter D), which permeates Oceanic folklore, occurs, the narrative seldom emphasizes the fact that something untoward is happening. Only infre quently does a narrative reveal that those who recounted it were aware that magic forms an exceptional category of experience. Characters simply perform feats, like walking upon water, spontaneously and without explanation. Only rarely do remarkable objects confer miraculous powers; rather, the powers seem to reside in the very role of the fictive characters. Much of the subject matter of Oceanic narrative is vii conditioned by the omnipresence of the sea. A vast number of new motifs, appearing in several chapters, is concerned with events of sea voyages, hurricanes, and fishing. Thus geography, as well as culture, has shaped the myths and tales of the South Seas to a marked extent. As mentioned above, the manuscript style of this volume is patterned after the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature Motifs which correspond exactly with those in Professor Thompson’s work utilize his number and caption; motifs which present essentially the same idea except for some inconsequential detail bear his number and caption, but are qualified in parentheses. New, unclassified motifs have been assigned original numbers—extrapolated as logically as possible—and entered under the most appropriate existing categories. These motifs are indicated in two ways: by an asterisk when the new motif seemed a logical progression of Thompson’s entry and a final numerical designation seemed plausible; or by a plus (+) sign when the position of the new entry in Thompson’s scheme appeared ambiguous. The works cited and analyzed in this index are intended to be representational of the narrative traditions of the whole of Polynesia (the author, becoming familiar with the immensity of relevant materials, abandoned his original intention of analyzing all existent collections). Some interesting texts from intensely collected groups like New Zealand, Samoa, or Hawaii—areas abundantly represented already—were passed over and weaker collections from culturally damaged and neglected groups like the Australs, Chatham Islands, or some of the Outliers, were included. The Lau Islands and Rotuma, for cultural reasons, and the Polynesian Outliers, for linguistic reasons, have been included in this study of Polynesian narratives. viii Motifs of obvious European derivation have been given, since one of the most patently useful functions of a motif-index is to further the investigation of intrusive alien themes into a body of tradition. The bibliography following each motif is entered in a progression that goes from east to west, and, secondarily, from south to north. One of the chief difficulties and one of the likeliest causes for error in preparing this work has been the necessity of interpreting events in Polynesian narratives into a scheme basically designed to cope with European folklore. For instance, the divisions of supernatural creatures into separate species (demons, trolls, fairies, succubi, et cetera), each having its position in the motif-index, is irrelevant when applied to Polynesia, where frequently all categories of the supernatural (ghost, god, demon) are lumped under a term denoting “spirit.” The writer has generally followed the nomenclature of each text’s translator, unless the analogy to European folklore was quite clear. The author chose to compile a motif-rather than a type-index for the reason that only a small proportion of Polynesian narratives occurs in a plurality of island groups. Not a single whole tale, apparently, is distributed over the whole extent of Polynesia. As a result, a type-classification would touch upon only a small fragment of the area’s oral traditions. NOTES 1. Though this book itself does not include an alphabetical