THE gallery lately devoted to a part of the African collections now contains, newly installed, a selection from those of Oceanian origin. Among these, the objects from the Melanesian islands-from New Guinea, eastwards and southeastwards to Fiji and New Caledonia-show the highest development in the South Seas of an art which depends chiefly on the more or less realistic presentation of human and animal forms, to an extent which does not obtain in the greater part of the rest of Oceania.
At one end of the gallery, against the eastern wall, a group of carvings from New Ireland has been placed, which includes some of the most interesting examples of Melanesian woodcarving-an art interesting not only for its rich combination of diverse forms composed skilfully for decorative effects, but for its connotations in the religious life of the people. The following article, by Mr. H. U. Hall, the Museum’s Curator of Ethnology, treats of this group.
NEW IRELAND is one of the two largest islands in the New Britain Archipelago, which lies to the east of the great island of New Guinea. In the northern part of the island the craftsmanship of the woodcarvers has reached its most intense development in the production of a highly characteristic expression of religious conceptions.
Museum Object Number: P4558
Image Number: 275
The carvings, known as malagan, are used chiefly in a yearly festival, celebrated in honour of the ancestors and of lately deceased relatives. Each village, as a rule, has its own festival, which takes place during the month of May, the preparations for it having occupied, sometimes, a great part of the preceding year. Most of this time is taken up in making the woodcarvings, a task of special craftsmen. They work in some place not frequented by the other villagers, or in an enclosure near the village surrounded by a high fence which is supposed to shield them from observation. But it is said that the requirement of isolation is not much more than a pretence of secrecy and that the process of manufacture and the forms of the carvings which are to be exhibited at the festival are rather an open secret.
Collecting sufficient foodstuffs for the feast and rehearsing the dances to be performed also take a considerable time. Feasting and dancing are the two most important elements of the ceremonies-at least in the eyes of the great body of the villagers; and of these elements the former is itself so much the more important that the dancing may sometimes be replaced by a simple processional march to the place where the malagan are to be shown. Thus the mass of provisions painfully and slowly gathered for the banquet will not too long have tempted the expectations of the revellers. The chief dishes are pig and taro, a kind of arum. As many as sixty pigs may be strangled and a correspondingly huge quantity of taro brought together for the feast. Only the choicest roots of taro, the principal product of the gardens, are collected for the occasion. They are piled in a bamboo framework on the edges of the festival ground, so as to be out of the reach of the village pigs, the carcasses of whose former companions are stacked in appetizing ranks, also on frames, beside the rows of large and shapely taro roots.
The festival, also known as malagan, by way of abbreviation of a sentence meaning “the malagan are made,” or “are ready,” occupies a part of at least two days. On the first day takes place the ”opening of the house,” the unveiling or exposure of the malagan. The high close fence which was built about the open shed in which the malagan are arranged for exhibition is pulled down and the carvings disclosed to the waiting crowd. This is followed by a single dance, since the demolition of the fence, which is sometimes followed by the removal of the malagan and the setting of them up again in a more convenient place for carrying out the other ceremonies, does not allow time for more dancing; the hungry company is too anxious to fall-to on the provisions for the banquet, and there is enough to be done before the feast itself can begin. The pigs have to be strangled and displayed on their frames, and they and the taro have to be cooked. The next is the great day. From early in the morning until about midday, the drums have been announcing the festivities. Everybody is in festival array, onlookers, maskers, and other dancers with painted faces, some of whom carry spears, others dancing wands or rattles. Somewhat withdrawn from the rest, a party of dancers goes through a final rehearsal; the others await the signal to begin. The drums sound a louder beat, and the dancers step forward. First one group appears and then another, then two or three at once, performing with great solemnity and earnestness the manœuvres of the traditional dances. The only noise, and that is probably enough, is the din of the drums and rattles.
In some places the festival is prolonged for another day or two. There is a long and varied repertory of dances, some for men and others for women. The sakabul (sokobuo, sukumbo) dance or malagan (for the dances also are included under this comprehensive term) is performed in honour of the sun and requires the employment of an emblem which symbolizes the sun as ancestor. This emblem is the head and neck of a hornbill, either of the actual bird or a representation carved in wood.
Museum Object Numbers: P4577, P4599, P4063, P4554, P4555, P4558, P4570, P4557, P4573, P4596, P4552, P4562, P4412, 29-89-285, P4863, P4593, P4584, P4581
Image Number: 22456
Six men advance, dancing in twos, one behind the other; each man in the first couple carries, by means of a loop held between his teeth, the head and neck of a real hornbill, while each member of the two other couples holds one of the carved emblems in his mouth. Then the line extends sideways, the two rear couples flanking the first pair, and they dance backward in the line of their first advance. Next each of the two leaders dances off by himself, while the others stand around. Then two lines are formed, each with one of the two leaders at its head, which run towards each other along the line of the first formation. Finally, still dancing, they fall into the double-line formation with which they began. Da capo, ad lib.
The wooden emblems are carried also in another dance of the men, which is apparently less important. In both cases, the performers are tabu, in the sense that they must for some time abstain from cooked taro and must avoid women.
Two of the carvings in the present exhibition include among their details the hornbill emblem of the sakabul dance. To the left of the case which stands in the middle of the wall, the figure nearer the case has in place of a nose a small separately carved board, one detail of which is the emblem in question. In the case itself, at the right, the emblem seems appropriately to hide the mouth of a carved human head surmounted by a hornbill fully carved, and decorated with birdskins.
The complete significance of the symbol in this connection is not clear. Obviously it has some reference to the dance sakabul, and probably it is a symbol of the sun. But the hornbill, in toto, occurs frequently in the carvings as a symbol of the moon, which appears to be its character here; and indeed this is not the only case in which an ambiguous symbol baffles interpretation. Do these two figures commemorate persons who in their lifetime were performers in the sakabul?
The carvings, with reference to the personages they commemorate, fall into two broad classes: mythological and historical-according to the most recent and the best informed of their commentators. The second class, we are told, includes “personal” carvings and those which are “non-personal,” the former subdivision referring to those which are made directly to commemorate a recently deceased individual, and the latter to those which represent any of the whole company of manes whose presence at the festival is desired and whose encouragement and aid the festival is designed to secure. All are ancestors and so are the mythological beings, the sun and the moon, whose symbols, especially those of the latter, cluster about the carvings of whatever nature these may be and to whatever class they formally belong. Briefly, it seems that the cult of the heavenly bodies, the mythical ancestors, and of the spirits of the departed, both ancestors in the physical chain of descent and blood relatives of the contemporary living, have become merged in one cult, and this is reflected in the symbolism of the carvings which are concerned in its chief ritual manifestations.
With this in mind and in the absence of testimony from the makers of the carvings with which we are here concerned, not much more can be attempted in the way of interpretation than to point out the significance of some of the symbols which occur in the details of the carvings shown.
Mask worn at the Malagan Festival, with the headdress representing the ancient mourning coiffeur. The mask itself is of wood painted red, white and black similar to that in the colored frontispiece
Museum Object Number: P4555
Image Number: 272
The difficulty of applying a particular interpretation to any given composition as a whole is well shown in the case of the two carvings already referred to. In the making of a “personal” malagan some feature of the circumstances of the death of the individual is often represented. In the middle of the body of the figure first mentioned there appears a gap into which is thrust the head of a flying fish. The conclusion seems obvious that this is a personal memorial to someone who met death by drowning and became food for fishes. But, in the first place, the figure stands erect-rather surprisingly so, for one in whose middle there is such a yawning solution of continuity-on the shell of a giant clam. This is a symbol of the moon; painted, as it is, white within and black without, it represents both the dark and the light phases of the moon, therefore the moon as a whole, the full moon. Again the eviscerated figure itself has the face painted with white striations about the eyes: these denote rays of the moon. Sometimes the moon is symbolized swallowing a dark flying-fish: the light phase of a waxing moon overcoming the dark phase-the moon becoming full-the moon-god-ancestor (or ancestress) appearing in full glory and benign power to its offspring. Here the dark flying-fish is devouring the bright moon: the waning moon again appears (as in the case of the giant clam) together with the waxing; again the moon as a whole in both phases, the deity in the completeness of both its forms together. The figure wears on its breast a representation of the kapkap, a disk of polished tridacna shell (giant clam) with an applied ornament of pierced tortoiseshell. The kapkap is a symbol of the sun, and also, among the people of a certain district, of the moon. We have, then, two possible sun-emblems, among others denoting clearly the full moon. Is there among the people of northern New Ireland not only a partial fusion of the ideas of human and divine ancestors, but a partial fusion also of the two great heavenly bodies as god-ancestors into one great luminary-god-ancestor? The hornbill symbolizes the full moon; the figure of a hornbill’s head-and-neck, the sun, as we have seen.
Since, however, the emblems of the sun, the hornbill-head apart, are typically some form of the sun disk and rays, built up of sticks and pandanus leaves, and since moon-malagan with emblems similar to those just described preponderate in the north, these two are, most likely, moon-malagan, and the sun-symbols are perhaps merely intended to recall the kinship of the two heavenly bodies and their conjunction as ancestors.
As to the rest of the carvings:
The second carving to the left of the case. The tusked fish’s head above and below is a moon-symbol, the tusks symbolizing the crescent moon. The birds with forked tails are drongos. The drongo is one of the clan badges of northern New Ireland and its presence in a carving indicates that the memorial was made for the exogamous marriage-group which has that badge. The human figures have no unmistakable attributes, and this may be a “historical” malagan in which the moon appears to show the kinship among all the ancestors, human and divine. White or white-and-black snakes symbolize the light crescent of the moon; black ones, the dark.
In the case, the carving in the middle. The cock is a moon symbol; its feathers and other surrounding ornaments with their sweeping lines denote rays of light. These form the body of a fish, another emblem of the moon. This is part of a moon-malagan intended to be fitted to the top of an anthropomorphic figure also representing the moon.
Made of bark and fibres worn at the Malagan Festival: “Only the wooden masks are preserved to grace the dances of another commemorative feast”
Museum Object Number: P4573
Image Number: 274
The wooden masks were worn by dancers. The crests and side ornaments represent an ancient mourning headdress. Two of the human masks have moon-attributes: snakes and tusks with snake-zigzags in relief. The bird mask represents a cock with snakes and flying-fishes: all moon-symbols.
The mask composed of palmleaf-sheath and twigs also has moon-attributes, notably the disc-ears.
To the right of the case, next to it. The large figure standing on a boar’s head is shown by the pandanus hat to be that of a woman; The boar’s head is another moon-symbol. There is an actual relation between the boar and the tridacna shell which we have seen elsewhere. Swine are fed from empty tridacna shells; the trough has become a symbol of the moon. The large human figure is evidently the moon as goddess. Possibly the small figure surmounting it is an “historical” element in the malagan.
The carving on the wall next to this shows a human head with tusks. The tusks, even when stylized into an angular form, symbolize the moon’s crescent. The hornbill appears again as the moon. Its bill holds the tip of the tail of an opossum. The situation of this beast in the composition is as uncomfortable as its position in the symbolism is obscure. The character of the other figures makes this carving evidently a moon-malagan.
The friezes above the case. At the top: A hornbill with wings outstretched holding in its bill a snake. The significance of these figures has already been noted. The wings of the hornbill are stylized into rays which enclose, or rather build up, the body of the fish symbolizing the moon. A moon-malagan: this carving belongs to a type known as kata, a shark-fishing float, from a somewhat fanciful resemblance in form to that implement-two identical wings or branches, one on each side of a well-marked central area.
The two other friezes are of a type known as ualik, “two ancestors,” in reference to the symbolic figure at each end. These are in both cases the moon as fish. The drongos which cover the surfaces of both carvings are badges with the same significance as in the composition to the left of the case, which is an ualik. of somewhat irregular form. The other elements, tusked man, snake, flying-fishes, we have seen before. They are all moon-symbols.
When the malagan-festival is over, the shed with its carvings is left to fall into ruin and decay. The fast-growing tropical bush covers all; the soft and fragile wood of the painfully wrought memorials rots and falls away. For next year’s ceremonies everything must be made anew. Only the wooden masks are preserved to grace the dances of another commemorative feast.