Poetry - Endnotes

Endnotes

“Life on the Lagoons,” by H. F. Brown, originally burned in the fire at Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.’s. ↩
From “Travels with a Donkey.” ↩
See note 2. ↩
Introduction.⁠—This tale, of which I have not consciously changed a single feature, I received from tradition. It is highly popular through all the country of the eight Tevas, the clan to which Rahéro belonged; and particularly in Taiárapu, the windward peninsula of Tahiti, where he lived. I have heard from end to end two versions; and as many as five different persons have helped me with details. There seems no reason why the tale should not be true. ↩
“The aito,” quasi champion, or brave. One skilled in the use of some weapon, who wandered the country challenging distinguished rivals and taking part in local quarrels. It was in the natural course of his advancement to be at last employed by a chief, or king; and it would then be a part of his duties to purvey the victim for sacrifice. One of the doomed families was indicated; the aito took his weapon and went forth alone; a little behind him bearers followed with the sacrificial basket. Sometimes the victim showed fight, sometimes prevailed; more often, without doubt, he fell. But whatever body was found, the bearers indifferently took up. ↩
“Pai,” “Honoura,” and “Ahupu.” Legendary persons of Tahiti, all natives of Taiárapu. Of the first two I have collected singular although imperfect legends, which I hope soon to lay before the public in another place. Of Ahupu, except in snatches of song, little memory appears to linger. She dwelt at least about Tepari⁠—“the sea-cliffs,”⁠—the eastern fastness of the isle; walked by paths known only to herself upon the mountains; was courted by dangerous suitors who came swimming from adjacent islands, and defended and rescued (as I gather) by the loyalty of native fish. My anxiety to learn more of “Ahupu Vehine” became (during my stay in Taiárapu) a cause of some diversion to that mirthful people, the inhabitants. ↩
“Covered an oven.” The cooking fire is made in a hole in the ground, and is then buried. ↩
“Flies.” This is perhaps an anachronism. Even speaking of today in Tahiti, the phrase would have to be understood as referring mainly to mosquitoes, and these only in watered valleys with close woods, such as I suppose to form the surroundings of Rahéro’s homestead. A quarter of a mile away, where the air moves freely, you shall look in vain for one. ↩
“Hook” of mother-of-pearl. Bright-hook fishing, and that with the spear, appear to be the favourite native methods. ↩
“Leaves,” the plates of Tahiti. ↩
“Yottowas,” so spelt for convenience of pronunciation, quasi Tacksmen in the Scottish Highlands. The organisation of eight sub-districts and eight yottowas to a division, which was in use (until yesterday) among the Tevas, I have attributed without authority to the next clan (see page 155). ↩
“Ómare,” pronounce as a dactyl. A loaded quarterstaff, one of the two favourite weapons of the Tahitian brave; the javelin, or casting spear, was the other. ↩
“The ribbon of light.” Still to be seen (and heard) spinning from one marae to another on Tahiti; or so I have it upon evidence that would rejoice the Psychical Society. ↩
“Námunu-úra.” The complete name is Námunu-úra te aropa. Why it should be pronounced Námunu, dactylically, I cannot see, but so I have always heard it. This was the clan immediately beyond the Tevas on the south coast of the island. At the date of the tale the clan organisation must have been very weak. There is no particular mention of Támatéa’s mother going to Pápara, to the head chief of her own clan, which would appear her natural recourse. On the other hand, she seems to have visited various lesser chiefs among the Tevas, and these to have excused themselves solely on the danger of the enterprise. The broad distinction here drawn between Nateva and Námunu-úra is therefore not impossibly anachronistic. ↩
“Hiopa the king.” Hiopa was really the name of the king (chief) of Vaiau; but I could never learn that of the king of Paea⁠—pronounce to rhyme with the Indian “ayah”⁠—and I gave the name where it was most needed. This note must appear otiose indeed to readers who have never heard of either of these two gentlemen; and perhaps there is only one person in the world capable at once of reading my verses and spying the inaccuracy. For him, for Mr. Tati Salmon, hereditary high chief of the Tevas, the note is solely written: a small attention from a clansman to his chief. ↩
“Let the pigs be tapu.” It is impossible to explain tapu in a note; we have it as an English word, taboo. Suffice it, that a thing which was tapu must not be touched, nor a place that was tapu visited. ↩
“Fish, the food of desire.” There is a special word in the Tahitian language to signify hungering after fish. I may remark that here is one of my chief difficulties about the whole story. How did king, commons, women, and all come to eat together at this feast? But it troubled none of my numerous authorities; so there must certainly be some natural explanation. ↩
“The mustering word of the clan.”

Teva te ua,
Teva te matai!
Teva the wind,
Teva the rain!

↩
“The star of the dead.” Venus as a morning star. I have collected much curious evidence as to this belief. The dead retain their taste for a fish diet, enter into copartnery with living fishers, and haunt the reef and the lagoon. The conclusion attributed to the nameless lady of the legend would be reached today, under the like circumstances, by ninety percent of Polynesians: and here I probably understate by one-tenth. ↩
See note 19. ↩
In this ballad I have strung together some of the more striking particularities of the Marquesas. It rests upon no authority; it is in no sense, like “Rahéro,” a native story; but a patchwork of details of manners and the impressions of a traveller. It may seem strange, when the scene is laid upon these profligate islands, to make the story hinge on love. But love is not less known in the Marquesas than elsewhere; nor is there any cause of suicide more common in the islands. ↩
“Pit of popoi.” Where the breadfruit was stored for preservation. ↩
“Ruby-red.” The priest’s eyes were probably red from the abuse of kava. His beard (ib.) is said to be worth an estate; for the beards of old men are the favourite head-adornment of the Marquesans, as the hair of women formed their most costly girdle. The former, among this generally beardless and short-lived people, fetch today considerable sums. ↩
“Tikis.” The tiki is an ugly image hewn out of wood or stone. ↩
“The one-stringed harp.” Usually employed for serenades. ↩
“The sacred cabin of palm.” Which, however, no woman could approach. I do not know where women were tattooed; probably in the common house, or in the bush, for a woman was a creature of small account. I must guard the reader against supposing Taheia was at all disfigured; the art of the Marquesan tattooer is extreme; and she would appear to be clothed in a web of lace, inimitably delicate, exquisite in pattern, and of a bluish hue that at once contrasts and harmonises with the warm pigment of the native skin. It would be hard to find a woman more becomingly adorned than “a well-tattooed” Marquesan. ↩
“The horror of night.” The Polynesian fear of ghosts and of the dark has been already referred to. Their life is beleaguered by the dead. ↩
“The quiet passage of souls.” So, I am told, the natives explain the sound of a little wind passing overhead unfelt. ↩
“The first of the victims fell.” Without doubt, this whole scene is untrue to fact. The victims were disposed of privately and some time before. And indeed I am far from claiming the credit of any high degree of accuracy for this ballad. Even in the time of famine, it is probable that Marquesan life went far more gaily than is here represented. But the melancholy of today lies on the writer’s mind. ↩
Introduction.⁠—I first heard this legend of my own country from that friend of men of letters, Mr. Alfred Nutt, “there in roaring London’s central stream,” and since the ballad first saw the light of day in Scribner’s Magazine, Mr. Nutt and Lord Archibald Campbell have been in public controversy on the facts. Two clans, the Camerons and the Campbells, lay claim to this bracing story; and they do well: the man who preferred his plighted troth to the commands and menaces of the dead is an ancestor worth disputing. But the Campbells must rest content: they have the broad lands and the broad page of history; this appanage must be denied them; for between the name of “Cameron” and that of “Campbell” the muse will never hesitate. ↩
Mr. Nutt reminds me it was “by my sword and Ben Cruachan” the Cameron swore. ↩
“A periwig’d lord of London.” The first Pitt. ↩
“Cathay.” There must be some omission in General Stewart’s charming “History of the Highland Regiments,” a book that might well be republished and continued; or it scarce appears how our friend could have got to China. ↩
Among the curiosities of human nature this legend claims a high place. It is needless to remind the reader that the Picts were never exterminated, and form to this day a large proportion of the folk of Scotland, occupying the eastern and the central parts, from the Firth of Forth, or perhaps the Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of Caithness on the north. That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler should have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own ancestors is already strange; that it should have begotten this wild legend seems incredible. Is it possible the chronicler’s error was merely nominal? that what he told, and what the people proved themselves so ready to receive, about the Picts, was true or partly true of some anterior and perhaps Lappish savages, small of stature, black of hue, dwelling underground⁠—possibly also the distillers of some forgotten spirit? See Mr. Campbell’s “Tales of the West Highlands.” ↩
This is the same Princess Moë whose charms of person and disposition have been recorded by the late Lord Pembroke in “South Sea Bubbles,” and by M. Pierre Loti in the “Mariage de Loti.” ↩
The yacht Casco had been so called by the people of Fakarava in Tahiti. ↩
“The whole front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes and fiddles, and as much dancing and deray within as used to be in Sir Robert’s house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons.”⁠—See “Wandering Willie’s Tale” in “Redgauntlet,” borrowed perhaps from “Christ’s Kirk of the Green.” ↩
In architecture, a series of piles to defend the pier of a bridge. ↩
The following eight lines were evidently intended by Stevenson as alternatives for the eight preceding lines. ↩
Manuscript breaks off here. ↩
In a hand, written much later, Stevenson penciled three exclamation marks after this line, then added, “Bully for you, L. Stevenson!” ↩
To these lines, which Stevenson wrote in one of his note books, he added the following verses which, although in a different meter, seem to be a continuation of the same thought.

There, where I never was,
There no moral laws,
Pleasures as thick as haws
Bloom on the bush!
Incomes and honours grow
Thick on the hills.
O naught the iron horse avails,
And naught the enormous ship.

↩
Manuscript breaks off here. ↩