Mythological Fragments from the Small Islands near Madang (New Guinea). 
783 
chores. The fairest one entered the dwelling where the youth was hid. She 
searched for the kettle, and finally located it under the sheath of the palm 
leaf. She drew the kettle out from beneath the sheath, wondering the while who 
could have put it in such a place. As the girl pushed the sheath to one side 
she was encircled by the powerful arms of the youth, who had been lying 
unobserved on the upper platform of the house. The girl twisted and turned, 
but to no avail. The man was the stronger of the two. The other maidens 
throughout the village heard the commotion inside the house, and in stark 
terror they fled back to the safety of the pandanus and were changed back 
into their original forms. But the beautiful maiden, in the clutches of the 
youth, tried to escape by changing her appearance. At first she turned into 
a mouse, then into a spider, finally into a lizard. But the man would not 
let the girl go. “I won’t let you go free again”, he told her. “You must turn 
into a beautiful maiden again and I will marry you.” At once in place of 
the lizard stood the lovely maiden. 
That evening the owner of the house came home from work and 
found the door open. But since he was in on the scheme he said nothing 8 . 
Entering the house he saw the youth, and the maiden trying to hide her 
face on his breast. The young man described how he had succeeded in cap 
turing the beautiful creature. To which the other replied : “You’ve done well.” 
When the rest of the people of the village arrived home and saw the 
unfamiliar girl, they said, “Who is this ? We have never seen such a 
beautiful girl in any of the villages.” The boy explained to the people how 
he had won the girl. Then he took her into his father’s house as his bride. 
In the course of time the young wife bore her husband a little son. 
Some years elapsed. Then one day when the boy’s mother went back 
to work in the gardens, she entrusted the child to the care of its grandmother 
in her absence. But the boy was a self-willed little fellow and paid no attention 
to the commands of its grandmother. Then the old lady became angry and 
scolded the child. “You don’t listen to me,” she said, “because you do not 
have human blood in your veins. It is pandanus blood.” The boy said 
nothing, but that night he asked his mother, “Mother, who are your parents ? 
Where is your native village ?” The question made the mother angry and 
she scolded the boy. Then he told her why he had asked the question. The 
mother was much embarrassed 9 . The next day when her husband asked 
her why she did not go to work she lied to him, “I cannot go today. I am 
sick. I want the child to stay with me too.” 
All the people went to work in the gardens except the mother and 
8 Otherwise the owner of the house would certainly have sounded an alarm had 
someone broken into the house in his absence and left it standing open. When the 
people leave their homes for a longer period they barricade the doorways with palm 
leaf matting and crossbars. 
9 It was a grave insult to the mother to be reminded of her non-human origin. 
This theme is found often and in many variations among the myths of the islands near 
Madang. In a previous article I recorded another example of it. Cf. Albert Aufinger. 
Eine erklärende Mythe zu den "prähistorischen” Keramikfunden im Madang-Gebiet 
(Anthropos, XXXIV, 1939, pp. 396-402, especially page 402, note 34).