TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

In Oral Traditions there is an example of a story (from Tokelau) in three versions, two of which contain an episode about the shape of canoes. We start with the version given by the narrator Kave:

"There is a couple residing in one place named Kui and Fakataka. After the couple stay together for a while Fakataka is pregnant. So they go away because they wish to go to another place - they go.

The canoe goes and goes, the wind roars, the sea churns, the canoe sinks. Kui expires while Fakataka swims.

Kui dies, but the narrator avoided such a brutal word and he also avoided 'drowned', instead he said oti, which we recognize from Rapanui - 'Oti ai ia Kui ka kua kaukau ia Fakataka.'

The English translation of oti into 'expires' seems right. The reason to avoid 'death' and 'drowning', is the same as the reason to avoid such words as 'wolf' and 'devil' - if you utter them they surely will come. Words are powerful.

Fakataka swims and swims, reaching another land. She goes there and stays on the upraised reef in the freshwater pools on the reef, and there delivers her child, a boy child. She gives him the name Taetagaloa.

The second part of the name Taetagaloa certainly is Tangaroa. As to ta'e we have these possibilities to chose from:

Ta'e

1. Negation used in conditional and temporal clauses: ana ta'e hoa te ûa, ina he vai, when it does not rain, there is no water. Also used with some verbal forms such as: o te aha koe i-ta'e-oho mai-ai? why didn't you come? Otherwise its use is limited to adjectives or verbal adjectives: tagata ta'e hupehupe, person who is not weak, hard worker; nohoga ta'e oti, endless existence, eternity. 2. Interjection expressing admiration, always used with he: ta'e he tagata! what a man! Ta'e he aga! what a great job! Ta'e he tagata koe mo keukeu i te henua! what a good farmer you are! Vanaga.

1. Prepositive negative: without, not, none. PS To.: tae, prepositive negative. 2. To remain; tae atu ki, as far as, until. Taehaga (tae 1), to shake the head in sign of negation, reluctant, to disdain, to be displeased. Churchill.

Maybe the name was a positive incantation: 'Not (to) Tagaloa!' (Not to 'expire' down in the deep as Kuhi did.)

When the baby is born a golden plover flies over and alights upon the reef. (Kua fanau lā te pepe kae lele mai te tuli oi tū mai i te papa). And so the woman thus names various parts of the child beginning with the name 'the plover' (tuli): neck (tuliulu), elbow (tulilima), knee (tulivae).

Now the narrative becomes really interesting. It is taking on the habits of myth. In Metoro's chants we have often met his manu rere at GD11

Now there is a golden bird who flies over (lele) the reef (papa). The golden colour makes us associate him with the sun and the whole scene with birth of the boy at water's edge reminds us of the sun's course as symbolically transferred by the kuhane of Hau Maka on to the geography of Easter Island.

"Plover ... name of several grallatorial birds, (pop.) lapwing ... f. L. pluvia (rain) ... The name is paralleled in the assoc. with rain by synon. Sp. pluvial, G. regenpfeifer 'rain-piper', Eng. rainbird." (English Etymology)

The locations ulu, lima, vae (neck, elbow, knee according to the translators) on the body of the child makes me immediately refer to the locations in time (or in the sky) of the sun during its voyage. The words rima and vae are frequent in Metoro's explanations and systematically appear at GD35 respectively GD29:

I have suggested that the joints in the limbs are symbolizing the 'female' locations of change in the routines. The joints are certainly made evident in GD35 and GD29.

As to uru the pattern among Metoro's words is completey different - hardly ever does he use that word. We have, however, met toa tauuru, tauru papagete and toa tauuruuru raaraa (at midnight), also uru nuku as a description of the appendage in Aa1-39

The translation of uru as 'neck' here seems reasonable. But 'neck' then should mean 'entrance' (channel), 'through' or something like that, because that is what the explanations in Vanaga and Churchill indicate.

In my mind the word rere reverberates because that word - according to Churchill 2 - may mean the ends of the branches (limbs) farthest away from the trunk. Which, I guess, means the liveliest (youngest) parts of the tree; they are 'quickly' (moving).

Rere

To jump; to run; to fly. Rere-taúra, to carry a child astride on one's shoulder: ku rere-taúra-á i te poki e te matu'a ki te gao, the mother carries her child astride her neck. Vanaga.

1. To fly, to run, to leap, to scale, to be carried away be the wind; ika rere, flying fish; rere aruga, to rebound; hetuu rere, meteor, flying star. Hakarere, to leap. P Pau.: rere, to soar, to fly; fakarere, to precede. Mgv., Ta.: rere, to fly, to leap. 2. To come, to reach to. Mq.: éé mai, to come. 3. To swerve, to deviate. (4. Hakarere, to cease, desist, postpone, quit, vacation; tae hakarere, perseverance. Mq.: rere, to disappear. 5. Hakarere, to save, preserve, put, place, reserve, burden, destine. 6. Hakarere, to abandon, forsake, give up, depose, expose, leave, omit, abjure, repudiate; hakarere ki te hau, uncover the head; hakarere ki te vie, to divorce, hakarere ki raro, to put down, tooa te kiko e ivi i hakarere, to strip off the flesh. Mq.: éé, to run away, to escape. 7. Hakarere? Ikapotu hakarere, to abut, to adjoin; e tahi hakarere, synonym.) Churchill.

Vi.: Lele, the end of a branch farthest from the body of a tree; leletha, to bend a branch in order to gather the fruit on it. Churchill 2.

In the present phase of Polynesian lele so much means to fly that the plainest way of particularizing birds is to describe them as the flying animals, manulele. But to manifest that flight, an exercise or balancing of wings, was by no means the primordial sense, for how could that give rise to a description of water in the water-courses? It will be no end to mass the several significations which lele exhibits ... Flight of birds ... Wind drive ... Meteors ... To leap ... To run ... Flow of water ... To swim ... To sail ... These several activities are exercised in earth, air, and water. The common factor is the swift motion. The means of motion cut no figure. It is an invisible means in the driving of the wind, the flash of the meteor silent athwart the sky on its lethal errand, the slip and slide of the stream in its deep course, the set of the sea, the gliding of the canoe upon its surface. Churchill 2.

They go inland at the land. The child nursed and tended grows up, is able to go and play. Each day he now goes off a bit further away, moving some distance away from the house, and then returns to their house. So it goes on and the child is fully grown and goes to play far away from the place where they live.

He goes over to where some work is being done by a father and son. Likāvaka is the name of the father - a canoe-builder, while his son is Kiukava.

The second part of the name Likāvaka is mirrored in the second part of the name Kiukava - vaka reflects as kava.

Taetagaloa goes right over there and steps forward to the stern of the canoe saying - his words are these: 'The canoe is crooked.' (kalo ki ama)

Karo

To train at parrying, dodging. Karoga, the art or action of parrying, dodging; te karoga o te mata, both eyelids; perhaps also: eye socket. Vanaga.

To decline, to be on the wane. Karoga, figure. Karokaro tariga, ear pendant. Churchill.

Ama

Outrigger. Vanaga.

Instantly Likāvaka is enraged at the words of the child. Likāvaka says: 'Who the hell are you to come and tell me that the canoe is crooked?'

Taetagaloa replies: 'Come and stand over here and see that the canoe is crooked.' Likāvaka goes over and stands right at the place Taetagaloa told him to at the stern of the canoe.

Looking forward, Taetagaloa is right, the canoe is crooked. He slices through all the lashings of the canoe to straighten the timbers. He realigns the timbers.

First he must again position the supports, then place the timbers correctly in them, but Kuikava the son of Likāvaka goes over and stands upon one support. His father Likāvaka rushes right over and strikes his son Kuikava with his adze. Thus Kuikava dies.

Kui

Ku'iku'i 1. To disturb, to inconvenience, to feel uncomfortable, said for instance of a thief who has hidden the things stolen under his clothes: he-ku'iku'i i roto i a îa te me'e toke, the stolen things inconvenience him; he-ku'iku'i te vânaga-haga, his manner of talking betrays embarrassment. 2. To crowd together; he-ku'iku'i te gagata i te uruga mai ki te hare, the people are crowding to get into the house. Vanaga.

To see T. Kuikui, to stagger. Churchill.

Taetagaloa goes over at once and brings the son of Likāvaka, Kuikava, back to life. Then he again aligns the supports correctly and helps Likāvaka in building the canoe. Working working it is finished."

Canoes, according to a straight reading of the story, should not be 'crooked'. If we understand that to mean symmetric, there is a puzzle to be solved. Because all four rongorongo texts depict assymmetric canoes:


A	H	P		Q

Immediately we can observe that in H and Q the middle oval shape (seemingly below the two canoes) is shifted to the right.

Furthermore, all the canoes in H, P and Q have both ends slightly bent to the right.

As to the canoe in A we should remember the discussion about the details in tapa mea:

In Aa1-31 we have tapa mea thinner and its top part is not horizontal:


Aa1-19	Aa1-21	Aa1-23	Aa1-25	Aa1-29	Aa1-31
2	3	4	5	7	8
right	right	left	left	horizontal	left

Possibly Aa1-29 is not horizontal but leaning towards right. Symmetry demands it.

Obviously the tapa mea glyphs in A are canoes. The canoe in the night (Aa1-45) seems to be as slim as that in Aa1-31. The top, though, looks horizontal (not leaning towards left).

But the night canoe (of A) anyhow is assymmetric: the right side is not quite as bent as the left side. In that respect it is similar to the night canoes in H, P and Q.

In Aa1-31 and Aa1-21 the impression is that the canoes are closed, in contrast to the rest of the tapa mea canoes and the night canoe, where there is a little opening at bottom.

'The dark part of tapa mea is at left, the light part at right. Birth is located at the bottom. This means that sun proceeds counterclockwise in the glyph. That corresponds to the view from a place south of the equator. Sun rises in the east (at right), is in the north at noon, and descends in the west (at left).'

Maybe canoes shouldn't be symmetric after all. Like golf balls perfect symmetry may be bad for the dynamics, there should be small bumps on them. I have a faint memory that Polynesian canoes were somewhat assymmetric, but for the moment I cannot recall from where I got that idea.