Curious Customs In

Melanesia

By Dr. C. E. Fox, in “Southern Cross Log”

Melanesians have curious customs, some of which civilised people might wish to adopt.

On my last birthday I was living in the Solomons at a school of about 50 small boys, my house being on a small hill above the sea. When I had finished my breakfast, I found myself suddenly surrounded by the boys, lifted up and carried on their shoulders down the hill by some of them, while others threw buckets of water over me and plastered me with mud. So we proceeded down to the sea, when they carried me to the end of the wharf and hurled me into the deep water at the end of it.

All this is a mark of special honour. I remember the people used to do it on occasions in San Cristoval to specially beloved village chiefs; and though at nearly seventy you are surprised when hurled violently fully dressed from the end of the wharf, remembering it is a mark of affection, you naturally enjoy it.

Headmasters at schools might care to introduce this quaint custom; or even watersiders (the wharf being handy) with their secretaries.

When on San Cristoval I often spent the night on the mountains as a guest at native feasts. All night people danced and sang and all night the orators, one by one, made speeches about matters of political or local interest or old customs and the history of their people. Each would walk up and down a line of fifteen yards or so, talking rapidly, and then, turning on their tracks with a cough or two, continue their speech. But each of them at the end of his speech would come down to us in the audience and give each of us a little piece of native money for listening to him —surely a more logical custom than our own, which is just the opposite. Political meetings and church congregations might like to try this custom.