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I thought i'd spend a minute to share a nice Fortean tale I found a little while ago. The account is found in Arthur Grimble's A Pattern of Islands, an account of the years 1914-1920, which the author spent working as a member of the Colonial Service in the British dependancy of the Gilbert Islands (located in the Pacific, now Kiribati):
A nice little tale in a book brimming with micro-Forteana.
For those of a scholarly bent: Arthur Grimble, A Pattern of Islands, London: John Murray, 1954. pp.172-176.
Old Kitiona 'Chief of Chiefs' has jokingly told a young Arthur that as importance and station is demonstrated through bodily size (he himself being pretty vast) Arthur's slight build is inappropriate for a white man. To rectify the problem the old man prescribes a rare delicacy: porpoise-flesh.
"It was common rummour in the Gilbert Islands that certain local clans had the power of porpoise-calling; but it was rather like the Indian rope-trick; you never met anyone who had actually witnessed the thing... "
"[Kitiona's] Cousin was a leading expert at the game; he could put himself into the right kind of dream on demand. His spirit went out of his body in such a dream; it sought out the porpoise-folk in their home under the western horizon and invited them to a dance, with feasting, in Kuma village..."
Arthur expresses an interest and so he and the chief's cousin agree upon a date in early january. Come the day he is instructed only to refer to the porpoises as 'our friends from the west' lest they reject the invitation. Having entered the hut the dreamer bids him to 'wait in peace - i go on my journey'.
"But the hot hours dragged by, and nothing happened. 4 O'clock passed. My faith was beginning to sag under the strain when a strangled howl burst from the dreamer's hut. I jumped round to see his cumberous body come hurtling head first through the torn screens. He sprawled on his face, struggled up, and staggered out into the open, a slobber of saliva shining on his chin. He stood awhile clawing at the air and whining on a queer high note like a puppy's. Then words came gulping out of him "Teirake! Teirake! (Arise! Arise!)...They come!...Our Friends from the west...They come!...Let us go down to the beach and greet them." He started at a lumbering gallop down the beach..."
The villagers run out into the breaking waves and stop in a line about fifty yards out.
"When i did at last see them, everyone was screaming hard...When they [porpoises]came to the edge of the blue water by the reef, they slackened speed, spread themselves out and started cruising back and forth in front of our line. Then, suddenly, there was no more of them."
"I was in the act of touching the dreamer's shoulder to take my leave when he turned to me: 'The King out of the west comes to meet me,' he murmered, pointing downwards. My eyes followed his hand. There, not ten yards away, was the great shape of a porpoise poised like a glimmering shadow in the glass-green water. Behind it followed a whole dusky flotilla of them. They were moving towards us in extended order with spaces of two or three yards between them, as far as my eye could reach. So slowly they came, they seemed to be hung in a trance. Their leader drifted in hard by the dreamer's legs. He turned without a word to walk beside it as it idled towards the shallows. I followed a foot or two behind its almost motionless tail. I saw other groups to right and left of us turn shorewards one by one, arms lifted, faces bent upon the water..."
"The villagers were welcoming their guests ashore with crooning words. Only men walking beside them; the women and children followed in their wake, clapping their hands softly in the rhythm of a dance. As we approached the emerald shallows, the keels of the creatures began to take the sand; they flapped gently as if asking for help. The men leaned down to throw their arms around the great barrels and ease them over the ridges. They showed no least sign of alarm. It was as if their single wish was to get to the beach."
"When the water stood only thigh deep, the dreamer flung his arms high and called...'Lift!' shouted the dreamer, and the ponderous black shapes were half-dragged, half-carried, unresisting, to the lip of the tide. There they settled down, those beautiful, dignified shapes, utterly at peace, while all hell broke loose around them. Men, Women and children, leaping and posturing with shrieks that tore the sky, stripped off their garlands and flung them around the still bodies, in a sudden dreadful fury of boastfullness and derision. My mind still shrinks from that last scene - the raving humans, the beasts so triumphantly at rest..."
The porpoises are killed with knives.
"There was feasting and dancing in Kuma that night. A chief's portion of the meat was set aside for me. I was expected to have it cured as a diet for my thinness. It was duly salted, but i could not bring myself to eat it. I never did grow fat in the Gilber Islands."
A nice little tale in a book brimming with micro-Forteana.
For those of a scholarly bent: Arthur Grimble, A Pattern of Islands, London: John Murray, 1954. pp.172-176.
