13 When we do wrong, they (the spirits) are angry, their minds are malevolent, for they desire that we should keep to the old customs.
XVI
Comparing the free translation with the literal one, it is easy to see that certain additions have been made, sentences have been subordinated and co-ordinated by various English conjunctions which are either completely absent from the native text, or else represented by such very vague particles as boge (already), and m’tage (indeed). On these linguistic questions I cannot enlarge here, but it will be good to go over each sentence in succession, and to show how much it was necessary to add from the general store of sociological and ethnographic knowledge, in order to make it intelligible.
- The meaning of the word ‘fall down’ is specialised here by the context, and I translated it by ‘launch.’ The particle boge had to be translated here by ‘by this.’ The words about the ‘clearing of the sea’ suggested at once to me that there was a special ancient custom in question. Then there is the name of the sub-clan Tolabwaga. In order to understand the full meaning of this phrase, it is necessary to realise that this name stands for a sub-clan; and then one has to be well acquainted with native sociology, in order to grasp what such a privilege, vested in a sub-clan, might mean. Thus, a word like this can in the first place be understood only in the context of its phrase, and on the basis