names, and invited to leave his abode, and to move to some other place, and there to be at his ease. In the second part, the canoe is mentioned with several epithets, all of which denote an act of discourtesy or ill-omen. This is obviously done to compel the tokway to leave the tree. In Boyowa, the yoba, the chasing away, is under circumstances a great insult, and at times it commands immediate compliance. This is always the case when the chaser belongs to the local sub-clan of a village, and the person expelled does not. But the yoba is always an act of considerable consequence, never used lightly, and in this spell, it carries these sociological associations with it. In the usual anticipatory way, characteristic of native speech, the tree is called in the spell “canoe” (waga).
The object of this spell is written very plainly in every word of it, and the natives also confirm it by saying that it is absolutely necessary to get rid of the tokway. What would happen, however, if the tokway were not expelled, is not so unequivocally laid down by tradition, and it cannot be read out of the spell or the rite. Some informants say that the canoe would be heavy; others that the wood would be full of knots, and that there would be holes in the canoe, or that it would quickly rot.
But though the rationale of the expulsion is not so well defined, the belief in the tokway’s evil influence, and in the dangers associated with his presence is positive. And this is in keeping with the general nature of the tokway, as we find him delineated by native belief. The tokway is on the whole a harmful being, though the harm he does is seldom more than an unpleasant trick, perhaps a sudden fright, an attack of shooting pains, or a theft. The tokway live in trees or in coral rocks and boulders, usually in the raybwag, the primeval jungle, growing on the coastal ridge, full of outcrops and rocks. Some people have seen a tokway, although he is invisible at will. His skin is brown, like that of any Boyowan, but he has long, sleek hair, and a long beard. He comes often at night, and frightens people. But, though seldom seen, the tokway’s wailing is often heard from the branches of a big tree, and some trees evidently harbour more tokways than others, since you can hear them very easily there. Sometimes, over such trees, where people often hear the tokway and get a fright, the above quoted incantation and rite are performed.
In their contact with men, the tokway show their unpleasant side; often they come at night and steal food. Many cases can be quoted when a man, as it seemed, was surprised in the act of stealing yams out of a storehouse, but lo! when approached he disappeared—it was a tokway. Then, sickness in some of its lighter forms is caused by the tokway. Shooting pains, pricking and stabbing in one’s inside, are often due to him, for he is in possession of magic by which he can insert small, sharp-edged and sharp-pointed objects into the body. Fortunately some men know magic by which to extract such objects. These men, of course, according to the general rule of sorcery, can also inflict the same ailments. In olden days, the tokway gave both the harmful and beneficent magic to some men, and ever since, this form of sorcery and of concomitant healing have been handed on from one generation to another.
Let us return to our canoe, however. After the rite has been performed, the tree is felled. In olden days, when stone implements were used, this must have been a laborious process, in which a number of men were engaged in wielding the axe, and others in re-sharpening the blunted or broken blades. The old technique was more like nibbling away the wood in small chips, and it must have taken a long time to cut out a sufficiently deep incision to fell the tree. After the tree is on the ground, the preliminary trimming is done on the spot. The branches are lopped off, and the log of appropriate length is made out of the tree. This log is cut into the rough shape of a canoe, so as to make it as light as possible, for now it has to be pulled to the village or to the beach.