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TRANSLATIONS
I am rereading The Golden Bough (the abridged version, but yet more than 900 pages), and it so happens that what I am reading fits in with the mysterious black double canoes. In not so ancient Europe and twice in early spring there were upheavals of the normal order of things. The second of these was centered on the events to get rid of 'Death', i.e. the winter half of the year. "... in many places the grown girls with the help of the young men dress up a straw figure with women's clothes and carry it out of the village towards the setting sun. At the boundary they strip it of its clothes, tear it in pieces, and scatter the fragments about the fields. This is called 'Burying Death'. As they carry the image out, they sing that they are about to bury Death under an oak, that he may depart from the people." Variants say that Death was thrown into the fire, or that he (sometimes a she) ended up in a river. The time for saying farewell to winter was - usually - a short time before Easter. In Lent food was scarce, and when Death had gone away the season moved forward from fasting to feasting. A fist held tight could illustrate the time of fasting, and at Ga5-4 the opposite can be seen:
The tip of the elbow ornament has gone from lean to fat. Instead of a moon type of Rei there is now a more normal variant. 5 * 6 = 30 means sun time. 4 * 17 = 68 should then refer to sun absent. An egg is magically produced after 4 lunar months into the year. From a world of sky (manu rere) sun has arrived. Tagata at Ga5-4 walks on land, and Y is held at left. In Ga5-5 henua is at right, the sky dome in triplicate (maitaki) at left. The time of kiore - henua is beginning two months from the beginning of the calendar. After two further months winter is going away. 2 + 2 = 4. There are two good months followed by two months of scarce food.
With 31 periods and given 6 months, we can calculate that each period will cover ca 6 days. 17 - 2 = 15, or half 6 months, ca 90 days. Spring equinox cannot be very far from the time when Death goes away. Earlier in spring another similar event was when Carnival was buried. "... there are two kindred sets of observances in which the simulated death of a divine or supernatural being is a conspicious feature. In one of them the being whose death is dramatically represented is a personification of the Carnival; in the other it is Death himself. The former ceremony falls naturally at the end of the Carnival, either on the last day of that merry season, namely Shrove Tuesday, or on the first day of Lent, namely Ash Wednesday. The date of the other ceremony - the Carrying or Driving out of Death, as it is commonly called - is not so uniformly fixed. Generally it is the fourth Sunday in Lent, which hence goes by the name of Dead Sunday ..." We have measured a distance somewhat longer that those 32 suggested from Ash Wednesday to the 4th Sunday in Lent:
If we go by 32 (which sounds very much like rongorongo), we could guess the bird with tight fist is the one who dictates:
A time of scarcity (fasting, Lent) before the first spring birds come with their eggs (Easter) is a natural occurrence and does not need any 'make-up'. Driving away Death, on the other hand, is a cultural creation. Both should have their places in the calendar text. But what is Carnival? A ship of joy, it seems, with mariners on board:
This picture from Wikipedia is as good as any, and from Germany. At the beginning of the new year a ship is launched, that we know already. We can identify it with Carnival, the Arch of Noah, filled with everything of value. And we recognize the custom also from Easter Island: ... Miro-oone, model boat made of earth in which the 'boat festivals' used to be celebrated ... on the first day of the year the natives dress in navy uniforms and performs exercises which imitate the maneuvers of ships' crews ... In the text of G it presumably comes before kiore - henua, before Lent. Indeed, henua proves the ship has landed. In Ga1-22 and Ga1-25 the ship is still at sea, I think:
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