12 - Songs on historical and mythic themes, and of ritual quality

Summary

The songs in this chapter are a diverse set, but broadly refer to the Tikopia past, or putative past, by contrast with those of earlier chapters, where the accent is mainly on contemporary themes. In referring to songs on ‘historical’ and on ‘mythic’ themes I do not mean to imply any subtle fusions or distinctions such have been fashionable in anthropology in recent years. All the events referred to in these songs have been a construct of oral tradition, and in that sense may be regarded as belonging to a common category of verbal statement relating to an imagined ‘mythic’ past. But some elements of this imagined past are more plausible as ‘real’ events than others. The voyages of fathers, grandfathers and other kin overseas mentioned in the songs in this and other chapters conform quite closely to actual Tikopia experiences known to men who sang these texts for my recording. Moreover, independent corroboration is fairly clear in a few cases. In the early nineteenth century the explorer Peter Dillon cited voyages of the Ariki Taumako to Vanikoro in terms very similar to those used by the Tikopia to me a century later in 1929 (Dillon 1829: i, 28, 34; n, 115-39. Firth 1959: 32). Recently, Richard Feinberg has confirmed from Anuta sources, voyages between Tikopia and Anuta which I was told of by Tikopia sources (Feinberg 1988:155). In terms of plausibility then, Tikopia songs referring to these and similar events may be classed as ‘historical’, in that they deal with what has very likely been part of Tikopia experience.