look out for her son's ship.[A] In Fiji the following tale is told
about the Nanga or sacred stone enclosure:--"This is the word of our
fathers concerning the Nanga. Long ago their fathers were ignorant of it;
but one day two strangers were found sitting in the Rara (public square),
and they said they had come up from the sea to give them the Nanga. They
were little men, and very dark-skinned, and one of them had his face and
bust painted red, while the other was painted black. Whether these were
gods or men our fathers did not tell us, but it was they who taught our
people the Nanga. This was in the old times, when our fathers were living
in another land--not in this place, for we are strangers here."[B] It is
worthy of note that the term "Nanga" applies not merely to the enclosure,
but also to the secret society which held its meetings therein.[C]
[Footnote A: _Flint Chips_, p. 104.]
[Footnote B: Fison, _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, xiv, 14.]
[Footnote C: Joske, _Internat. Arch. f. Ethnographie_, viii. 254.]
5. The little people make their dwellings either in the interior of a
stone or amongst stones. I am not here alluding to the stones on the sides
of mountains which are the doorways to fairy dwellings, but to a closer
connection, which will be better understood from some of the following
instances than from any lengthy explanation. The Duergas of the
Scandinavian Eddas had their dwelling-places in stones, as we are told in
the story of Thorston, who "came one day to an open part of the wood,
where he saw a great rock, and out a little way from it a dwarf, who was
horridly ugly."[A] In Ireland, in Innisbofin, co. Galway, Professor Haddon
relates that the men who were quarrying a rock in the neighbourhood of the
harbour refused to work at it any longer, as it was so full of "good
people" as to be hot.[B] In England the Pixy-house of Devon is in a stone,
and a large stone is also connected with the story of the Frensham
caldron, though it is not clear that the fairies lived in the rock
itself.[C] Oseberrow or Osebury (_vulgo_ Rosebury) Rock, in Lulsey,
Worcestershire, was, according to tradition, a favourite haunt of the
fairies.[D] In another part of Worcestershire, on the side of the
Cotswolds, there is, in a little spinney, a large flat stone, much worn on
its under surface, which is called the White Lady's Table. This personage
is supposed to take her meals with the fairies at this rock, but what the
exact relat
|