Getting the Tolal

story onto paper

A Mar na Kilana ta ra Lolalolo.

By N. Threlfall. $ A 6.00. An Offering Fit for a King. By H.

Linge, ed. N. Threlfall. 5A5.00.

Both published by United

Church, Rabaul, PNG.

A Mar na Kilana ta ra Lolalolo is the revised and expanded edition, translated into Kuanua, the language of the Tolai people, by Neville Threl fall of his One Hundred Years in the Islands: the Methodist/ United Church in the New Guinea Islands Region, 1875- 1975. The book records the

work of European, Fijian, Ton gan and New Guinean clergy and laymen and women from 1875, when the Reverend George Brown and a handful of Fijians and Samoans landed in the Duke of York Islands, until 1975, seven years after the Methodists had joined with the

London Missionary Society’s

successor, the Papua Ekalesia, and established the United Church of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

In my review of One Hun dred Years in the Islands (PIM

I October 1975), I observed that i it was good to read about the I late Hosea Linge whose life I story, translated into English under the title The Erstwhile [ Savage (1931), was the first

i autobiography by a Papua

I New Guinean. Linge’s notes f for that book and his further notes, covering the years from 1931 to 1952, all written in Kuanua, and a postscript by the Reverend Stanley M.

Geddes, who knew Linge well, make up An Offering Fit for a King: the life and work of the Rev Hosea Linge, told by him

\ self, translated and edited by

Neville Threlfall.

Flosea Linge, a traditional ‘big man’, born near the end of i the last century, was one of the pioneers of Methodism among \ the peoples of New Ireland and I New Britain. His recollections I of tribal life among the Barok people of central New Iceland are of great interest because, apart from Hortense Powder maker’s Life in Lesu and articles by Father Peekel, little has been written about the be liefs and ways of the tribal groups on New Ireland prior to World War 11. Moreover,

Linge recounts his experiences

as a teacher and pastor. Much of his time was spent imparting skill in the ‘three Rs’ to students whose home back ground was not conducive to such learning. And there was the added difficulty of his own

shortcomings as a pedagogue:

modern teacher training was not given to New Guineans until the mid-19505.

As one would expect, Linge saw his experiences through the eyes of a convinced Chris tian. In his behaviour toward his first wife, Anasain Pising, and Rodi Mangin, whom he married eight years after Anasain’s death, in his fearless travels on circuit the Pacific, as we all know, is far from that for small launches - and in his

work among his people during

the Japanese occupation,

Hosea Linge truly earned his

title ‘Reverend’.

An Offering Fit for a King is of special value because almost all of the written accounts of the impact of Christian the ology and mores on the tra

ditional religious beliefs and

ways of New Guineans are by

Europeans who, whether con temporaries or latecomers, cannot tell the tale ‘from within’.

There are about 40,000 Kuanua speakers for whom A Mar na Kilana ta ra Lolalolo is a milestone in their vernacular literature. In the two books re viewed here, they and their

neighbours have the begin

nings of readily accessible and inexpensive written material about their past. (Several pub lications, such as Sister Adda’s sketch of the life of Archbishop Louis Couppe, are of minor

import.) They and everyone

else who believes that, on bal ance, Christianity has made a

positive contribution to Papua

New Guinea’s development are indebted to Neville Threl fall, author, editor and trans lator. Harry Jackman.