Barbara 's Story

Womjimjim Was The Hero, But

This Was-

By Peter England

•IJERE’S that woman again!” said 11 Barbara, coming in through the front door of our New Guinea bungalow, followed by two dogs and Dunhill, the parrot, who spends most of his time hanging around on the verandah waiting for someone to let him in. “Where’s Sally?”

“I think she’s having a shpwer or something; she’ll be here in a minute. Come on in; take a pew.

Have a whisky.” (This, of course, is only my joke; Barbara does not ■drink whisky.) I put down my book and poured out one for myself.

Barbara seated herself.

“Oh, Peter, I’ve got a good story for you. You write native stories, don’t you? This is one that my cook-boy told me, and it’s all about a mary who had three piccaninnies and she got cross with a man who burnt the grass, in her garden, and so he skun her . . .”

“Skun her?”

“Yes, you loiow, skinned her. And then he put the skin on and pre tended to be her and he went to her house and tried to get her piccaninnies, but they were a wake up, and so they ran away to an other man, and —oh, it goes on and on and they do all sort of things.

Do you think it will make a good story?”

“Well, I don’t know; but I do like that bit where the cove skun her. . .”

“i’ll write it out for you if you like, if you can understand my pidgin. . .” , , T ,„ “You do that, Barbara, and 111 see what I can make out of it.”

Then Sally came in and the talk turned to woman-talk and I went back to my book and my whisky. * * * The next day Barbara showed me her story. . .

“One fella mary got three pikanini mary, two, fella i big-fella finish, one fella i baby yet. . .

I said, “Look, Barbara, 111 tell you what. I’ll translate it into Eng lish as I go, and you tell me if I get it wrong.”

Well, then; There once lived a widow-woman who had three girl children; one of them was still a baby, but the other two were big enough to look after themselves.

It was the custom of the woman to go fishing in a nearby lagoon and on these occasions she would leave the baby in the care of the two older children. She would walk down the track through the kunai

grass to the bank of the lagoon, and then she would sit in the shade of a tree and catch fish with her line of twisted fibre.

Now, one day a certain man came and set fire to the kunai; the woman looked up and saw 7 the smoke and the fire approaching, and then she saw the man.

She was very cross that he should have burnt the kunai, and she spoke to him in anger. This made the man ashamed and he went away, but soon he came upon the carcass of a pig w r ho had been caught in the fire.

Because he was still ashamed he crawled into the belly of the pig and hid.

Presently the woman returned along the track and also found the pig; she put it into her bilum (net bag) and hoisted it on to her back.

Now the man (in the pig) had a knife made from the sharpened bone of a fish, and with this he pricked the woman in the shoulder.

She, naturally, cried out in pain, and threw her burden to the ground.

She examined her shoulder to see what had bitten her, but, finding nothing, again picked up the bilum and continued on her way.

Agan the man pricked her with his bone knife, and again she cried out and dropped the bilum and its contents. This time the man crawled out of the pig’s belly and revealed himself. He asked the woman if she was still cross with him. She was, and she told him so, so he killed her with his bone knife, and skinned her, and then he put her skin on himself (just like clothes).

Then the man went up to the woman’s house and he called to the two older children to bring the baby to him. But, in spite of the skin he wore, the girls knew by his voice that it was not their mother: they said to one another, “This man has killed our mother.” So they took the baby and ran away to the house of another man.

“Look, Barbara, haven’t these people got any names? It’s getting a bit confusing. . .”

“Yes, you’ll come to that in a minute; that’s the way the boy told it.”

“Oh. . .!”

Well, the girls told this other man that the first man had killed their mother, so he (the other man) hid them in his house, and when the first man came looking for them, he (the goodie) killed him (the baddie). The name of the man who

protected the girls was Guzbal.

“This is where the names co: ( in,” said Barbara.

“Well, that’s good .” . . . and the names of the git: were Yeoma, the elder, and Moil* the younger.

When Guzbal killed the bado the eyes of the dead man fell o and started to roll away. Yeomai once ran forward and picked one eye and held it fast; she call to her sister to catch the other oc but Morla was afraid, and so t eye got away and flew up into coconut palm, where it sat on frond and watched everything tt went on. Guzbal and the two sisti then cut up the dead man s cooked him and ate him. N Yeoma was pregnant. . .

“How the dickens did tW happen.”

“Well, I don’t know,” sz Barbara, i{ but that’s how it is in story.” ... so Guzbal said to Moid “To-morrow you two must cut fibres of the sago palm and mu a pul-pul (grass skirt) for the cM that Yeoma is about to carry.”

Now the eye sitting in the cocox palm heard all this, so the next » when Yeoma and Morla went do to the sago swamp, it changed J form into that of a man, and 1 lowed them, and caught Morla, s carried her off and put her in canoe and paddled up the rii away, away, long-way too mu until he came to a place where tW was a little hut on the bank of river. Here he lit a fire, and wfr it was burning brightly he Morla down on top of it (just libi piece of firewood). Morla cried in great pain, but the eye-rn made her stop there, and she ci; out, sitting on top of the fire, many moons.

Now, back in her village, Yeo carried her child, and he waa man-child ond his name was We’ jimjim. As the years passed—M»] was still sitting on top of the flu Womjimjim grew big and stn and he played with the other H of the village.

One day he fought with anoh boy and the other boy was cn and said: “You are too strong. V don’t you go and rescue your as Morla from the fire on which has been sitting for many moon Womjimjim had never heard) Morla, so he went to his motf Yeoma, and asked her if it was tt Yeoma said, yes, alas, it was T true. So Womjimjim went into ( bush and cut down a garamut and carved the log in the shape a pigeon and got inside, but wood was too heavy and it wt\ not fly. So he found a piece; driftwood from the river and do it and carved it and this time w* (Continued on Page 91)

I got inside it rose and flew away lily.

He steered his wooden bird up ong the course of the great river, id flew on until he came close to ; e hut where Morla still burned on ie fire. When he got close he ickened speed and approached utlously until at last he saw his int sitting on the fire outside the it.

He called out to her, “Aunt Drla, is that you?” and she replied, tes, Womjimjim, this is me!” So [lifted her off the fire, and since |r legs were badly charred, due to rning for so many years, he took me wet clay and plastered it on em, where it soon grew into good althy fresh.

Just then the man (the eye-man) turned from the bush where he jd been hunting. When he saw I fire was out and that Womjim ji and Morla were sitting comfort ly on the little platform outside b hut, he became very cross, iwever, before he could speak, wnjimjim killed him with one rust of his black-palm spear. fhen Womjimjim made ready the aoe and Morla gathered together

r belongings. . .

'Where did she get the belong

)s from?”

'Well. . .” said Barbara.

What’s the way it is in the story?’

[Yes.”

>o that’s what happened. Worn ijim made ready the canoe and >rla gathered up her belongings d they embarked and paddled mi the river until they came once

again to their own village. There they found Yeoma, who now had three more children, and they all stopped there and nobody went away any more. ♦ * * “Do you think it’s a good story?” asked Barbara.

“Well, it’s certainly an extra ordinary story. It’s probably—er— symbolic.”

“What do you mean — symbolic?”

“Well, to tell the truth, I don’t quite know. But it’s a nice word, don’t you think? By the way, I hope you don’t mind me changing your name to Barbara?”

“Of course not,” said Barbara.

t A bounteous season brought a glut of superb vegetables and fruit to the Noumea market in October — and famine prices to the growers.

The producers were not encouraged by the news that the ship Thorshall in October brought fro m the United States, among other goods, 1,390 cases of tinned vegetables. ’ A set of identity discs have been found in the stomach contents of a crocodile caught in the Warangoi river area of New Britain recently.

Owing to the action of stomach juices, the discs were very worn, but they contained enough in formation to indicate that they belonged to an American airman.