magician, for instance, receives definite gifts from the community and from certain individuals. The sorcerer is paid by the man who asks him to kill or who desires to be healed. The presents given for magic of rain and fair weather are very considerable. I have already described the payments given to a canoe-builder. I shall have to speak later on of those received by the specialists who make the various types of vaygu’a.
Here also belong the payments, always associated with love intrigues. Disinterested love is quite unknown among these people of great sexual laxity. Every time a girl favours her lover, some small gift has to be given immediately. This is the case in the normal intrigues, going on every night in the village between unmarried girls and boys, and also in more ceremonial cases of indulgence, like the katuyausi custom, or the mortuary consolations, mentioned in Chapter II, Division II. A few areca-nuts, some betel pepper, a bit of tobacco, some turtle-shell rings, or spondylus discs, such are the small tokens of gratitude and appreciation never omitted by the youth. An attractive girl need never go unprovided with the small luxuries of life.
The big mortuary distributions of food, sagali, have already been mentioned several times. On their economic side, these distributions are payments for funerary services. The deceased man’s nearest maternal kinsman has to give food gifts to all the villagers for their assuming mourning, that is to say, for blackening their faces and cutting their hair. He pays some other special people for wailing and grave digging; a still smaller group for cutting out the dead man’s ulna and using it as a lime spoon; and the widow or widower for the prolonged and scrupulously to be observed period of strict mourning.
All these details show how universal and strict is the idea that every social obligation or duty, though it may not on any account be evaded, has yet to be re-paid by a ceremonial gift. The function of these ceremonial re-payments is, on the surface of it, to thicken the social ties from which arise the obligations.
The similarity of the gifts and payments which we have put into this category is expressed by the native use of the word mapula (repayment, equivalent) in connection with all these gifts. Thus in giving the reason why a certain present is made to a magician, or why a share is allotted to a man at the sagali (distribution), or why some valuable object is given to a specialist, they would say: “This is the mapula for what he has done.” Another interesting identification contained in linguistic usage is the calling of both magical payments and payments to specialists: a ‘restorative,’ or, literally, a ‘poultice.’ Certain extra fees given to a magician are described as ‘ katuwarina kaykela ’ or ‘poultice for his leg’; as the magician, especially he of the garden or the sorcerer, has to take long walks in connection with his magic. The expression ‘poultice of my back,’ will be used by a canoe-builder who has been bending over his work, or ‘poultice of my hand’ by a carver or stone-polisher. But the identity of these gifts is not in any way expressed in the detailed terminology. In fact, there is a list of words describing the various payments for magic, the gifts given to specialists, love payments, and the numerous types of gifts distinguished at the sagali . Thus a magical payment, of which a small part would be offered to ancestral spirits, is called ula’ula ; a substantial magical gift is called sousula ; a