Note 7.4 — Chapter VIII · THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.
Reading edition
Often, however, the original planting is not mentioned. The twins, in a Melanesian story from the island of Aurora, simply set a taboo upon a banana belonging to them, and said to their uncle Qatu: “If you go into the garden and see our bunch of bananas beginning to ripen at the top and ripening downwards to the end, Taso has killed us; but if you see that it has begun to ripen at the end and is ripening upwards, we shall have killed him.”7.4 A banana growing by the hero’s hut is also his life-token, in a Malagasy story.8.1