Note 1 — Music and Singing, Dancing and Toys and Games

My efforts to obtain light from native sources upon this question of imitation in Mafulu were fruitless, as the natives questioned knew nothing of it; and on my return from Mafulu to the coast I did not again pass through the Mekeo villages. But on reaching the coast I made further enquiries upon the subject from the Fathers there of the Mission, and obtained three interesting pieces of information. First, I was told that the Mekeo clan Inawae of the Mekeo village Oriropetana, whose clan badge is the goura pigeon, and who are not allowed to kill and eat it, and whose bird totem it appears to be, say that they are descended from the goura pigeon, and that an ancestor of theirs, though himself a man, had all the powers and faculties of movement of those birds, and that he used to dance with them, and so learnt the dance and taught it to his people. Unfortunately no enquiry had been made as to the question of any imitative character in their present dancing, and the information only emanated from a particular clan with a particular association with the bird. I therefore do not attach undue general importance to this case.1