This short version of the myth I obtained in Sinaketa. The story shows us three people migrating for unknown reasons from the North-East to this district. The sister, after having lost her comb, decides to remain in Siyawawa, and turns into the rock Sinatemubadiye’i. The brothers go only a few miles further, to undergo the same transformation at the Northern end of Sarubwoyna beach. There is the characteristic distinction between the cannibal and the non-cannibal. As the story was told to me in Boyowa, that is, in the district where they were not man-eaters, the qualification of ‘good’ was given to the non-cannibal hero, who became the rock further out to sea. The same distinction is to be found in the previously quoted myth of the Kudayuri sisters who flew to Dobu, and it is to be found also in a myth, told about the origins of cannibalism, which I shall not quote here. The association between the jungle and cannibalism on the one hand, and between the sea and abstention from human flesh on the other, is the same as the one in the Kudayuri myth. In that myth, the rock which looks towards the South is cannibal, while the Northern one is not, and for the natives this is the reason why the Dobuans do eat human flesh and the Boyowans do not. The designation of one of these rocks as a man-eater (tokamlata’u) has no further meaning, more especially it is not associated with the belief that any special dangers surround the rock.
The importance of these two rocks, Atu’a’ine and Aturamo’a lies, however, not so much in the truncated myth as in the ritual surrounding them. Thus, all three stones receive an offering—pokala—consisting of a bit of coco-nut, a stale yam, a piece of sugar cane and banana. As the canoes go past, the offerings are placed on the stone, or thrown towards it, with the words:
“Old man (or in the case of Sinatemubadiye’i, ‘old woman’) here comes your coco-nut, your sugar cane, your bananas, bring me good luck so that I may go and make my Kula quickly in Tu’utauna.”
This offering is given by the Boyowan canoes on their way to Dobu, and by the Dobuans as they start on the Kula Northwards, to Boyowa. Besides the offerings, certain taboos and observances are kept at these rocks. Thus, any people passing close to the rock would have to bathe in the