Returning then again to our group of sailors, who sit under the stunted pandanus trees of Yakum, let us listen to one of the companions of the daring Maradiana, now dead, to one of the descendants of the great Maniyuwa. He will tell us how, early in the morning, on the day of departure from Sinaketa, or sometimes on the next morning, when they leave Muwa, he performs the first rite of kayga’u. Wrapping up a piece of leyya (wild ginger root) in a bit of dried banana leaf, he chants over it the long spell of the giyorokaywa, the kayga’u of the Above. He chants this spell into the leaf, holding it cup-shaped, with the morsel of ginger root at the bottom, so that the spell might enter into the substance to be medicated. After that, the leaf is immediately wrapped round, so as to imprison the magical virtue, and the magician ties the parcel round his left arm, with a piece of bast or string. Sometimes he will medicate two bits of ginger and make two parcels, of which the other will be placed in a string necklet, and carried on his breast. Our narrator, who is the master of one of the canoes, will probably not be the only one within the circle round the camp fire, who carries these bundles of medicated ginger; for though a toliwaga must always perform this rite as well as know all the other magic of shipwreck, as a rule several of the older members of his crew also know it, and have also prepared their magical bundles.
This is one of the spells of the giyorokaywa, such as the old man said over the ginger root: