‘success’ ‘abundant haul,’ ‘excitement,’ ‘beauty.’ Still more often the aim of magic is stated in a metaphorical manner, by similes and double meanings. In other parts of the spell, where the magical meaning is imprisoned not so much in single words and expressions, as in explicit phraseology and long periods, we found that the predominant features are: lists of ancestral names; invocations of ancestral spirits; mythological allusions; similes and exaggerations; depreciating contrasts between the companions and the reciter—most of them expressing an anticipation of the favourable results aimed at in the spell. Again, certain parts of the spell contain systematic, meticulous enumerations, the reciter going over the parts of a canoe one by one; the successive stages of a journey; the various Kula goods and valuables; the parts of the human head; the numerous places from which the flying witches are believed to come. Such enumerations as a rule strive at an almost pedantic completeness.
Passing to the phonetic characteristics, we saw that a word will often be used in a shape quite different from those in which it is used in ordinary speech; that it will show notable changes in form and sound. Such phonetic peculiarities are most conspicuous in the main words, that is in the key-words and initial words. They are sometimes truncated, more often provided with additions, such as symmetrical or antithetic affixes; formatives added for the sake of sound. By these means there are produced effects of rhythm, alliteration and rhyme, often heightened and accentuated by actual vocal accent. We found play on words by symmetrical couples of sounds, with antithetic meaning like mo- and vi-, or mwana- and vina-, both couples signifying ‘male’ and ‘female’ respectively; or -mugwa (ancient) and -va’u (new); or ma- (hither) and wa- (thither), etc., etc. Especially we found the prefix bo-, carrying the meaning of ritual or tabooed, with derivation from bomala; or with the meaning ‘red,’ ‘festive’ in its derivation from bu’a (areca-nut); onomatopoetic sounds such as sididi or saydidi, tatata, numsa, in imitation of speed noises, of the wailing of wind, rustling of sail, swish of pandanus leaves; tududu, in imitation of the thunder claps; and the rhythmical, expressive, though perhaps not directly onomatopoetic, sentence:
*Ga’u, yaga’u, yagaga’u, yaga’u, bode, bodegu*.
XIII
If we now turn to the substances used in the magical rites, as means of ritual transference of the spell, we find in canoe magic, dried lalang grass, dried banana leaf, dried pandanus leaf, all used in the magic of lightness. A stale potato is employed to carry away the heaviness of the canoe; although on another occasion heaviness is thrown away with a bunch of lalang grass. The leaves of two or three shrubs and weeds, which as a rule the natives take to dry their skin after bathing, are used for magical cleansing of a canoe body, and a stick and a torch serve in other rites of exorcism. In the rite associated with the blackening of a canoe, charred remains of several light substances such as lalang grass, the nest of