in the womb which, they added, "looks like a mouse." Tomwaya Lakwabulo volunteered the statement that pre-incarnated infants look like very minute and fully developed children, and that they are sometimes very beautiful. He had to say something, of course, since, on his own showing, he had seen them frequently in Tuma. Even the nomenclature is not quite definite. Usually it is called waywaya, small child or foetus, but sometimes the word pwapwawa is used, which, though almost synonymous with waywaya, refers perhaps rather to a child already born than to the foetus or a pre-incarnated baby. Quite as often, however, it is spoken of simply as "child," gwadi (plural, gugwadi).
I was told, though I was not able to verify this completely, that there is a magic performed over a species of betel leaf (kwega) called kaykatuvilena kwega, to induce pregnancy. A woman in Yourawotu, a small village near Omarakana, knows this magic, but unfortunately I was unable to get into touch with her.[1]
Thus, as is always the case, this belief dissolves into various and only partially consistent elements when examined under the magnifying glass of detailed research made over an extended area. The divergencies are not wholly due to geographical differences; nor can they be assigned to special social layers, for some of the inconsistencies occurred in the account of one and the same
- ↑ A statement which I guardedly gave on the authority of a trader in my article for the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1916, p. 404, to the effect that there are "some stones in Sinaketa, to which a woman who wants to become enceinte may have recourse," I found quite baseless after careful inquiries on the spot.
