Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before by George Turner
page 41 of 222 (18%)
page 41 of 222 (18%)
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tooth must have had the crook running _outside_ of the wound, and
_vice versa_ in a case of death. To this day the long tooth superstition is a nuisance. A few years ago some people went to that part of Savaii to buy a canoe. They did not get it, but, from a number of deaths soon after at their village, they believed that the tooth had followed them. After a battle ten years ago a man from the long tooth district in Savaii who had been killed, was buried in a village in Upolu. After a time a young chief died there rather suddenly. The tooth was suspected by some of the old people, and so they dug up the bones of the man who had died in battle four years before, and threw them away into the sea, far off outside the reef, so as to rid the land, as they supposed, from the long tooth enemy. Like the celebrated tooth of Buddha at Ceylon, visited by the Prince of Wales in 1875, about which kings fought, the attempt to burn which burst the furnace, and, although buried deep in the earth and trodden down by elephants, managed to come up again, so the long tooth god of Samoa continues to come up every now and then after a sudden death or a prolonged disease of the knee joint, or other deadly ailment. 20. PAVA. This was the name of a war god on the south side of Upolu. It was originally the name of a man who came from the east end of the group. He and his wife went to work as usual in the bush, and left their children in the house. The children kindled a fire to cook some food. Tangaloa, seeing the smoke, came down from the heavens. He found only the children, and inquired where their parents were. Gone to work, |
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