Details

Latitude

-8.4859979

Longitude

142.6175

Start Date

1964-10-17

End Date

1964-10-17

Mpukey. A Manus Titan village on small islands about 10 mi. W. of Pere off the south coast. One: Napo and Nyayingey Two: Story of Tyilipwis. Three: Story of coming to Mpukey. Four. Story of tidal wave. Five. Mpukey SIL list. | "Notes on Box: A Mbuke-Bipi fight. TP/PE (TP stands for /tok ples/ or vernacular. PE for Pidgin English. A duet tape consists of alternating, sentence by sentence translation from TP to PE); Interview on Manus split; A punitive expedition to Mbuke, TP/PE; Natural Childbirth a myth. TP/PE; Ponpon and Sauna, the brother who died of shame Singsing (PE word for any singing, but also for a dance or feast) enrilank (a cry, dirge, lament as in commemorative ballad for a deceased person) 2nd for boy who broke his leg. Part one ends with TS eliciting a Mpukey-Titan word list and gramm. sample I lost all of the indexing notes of this tape in a computer hangup. Must be repeated but now I am going on to part two." | " Starting transcription of last part of this tape as another file. Unankinray Nyalow . Nyalow a girl of Mpukey. In mamanra, menstrual hut. Man from mainland sends magic log to fetch her to marry him as second wife. Nyalow’s baby’s feces sent as messenger to her ? father on Mpukey. About Mpwarow. Story full of magic. Nyalow’s mother creates rain and storm. Many narrative gaps. End of story. Very choppy but interesting. Clear. The place where Nyalow went to marry was accustomed to delivering babies by cutting open the mother’s belly. Nyalow hid and gave birth naturally from which the people of that place learned about natural Nyakupwen of Mpukey telling story of Ponpon and his mother. She makes a fishing spear for him. Contains sung refrains. Pasim ai refers to the mother making spear with one point. Translator having trouble translating the sung refrains. Spear with two points, two fish. Gets to ten points. His wife’s name Saina. She doesn’t return his song. He finds her dead. He brings her back to life striking her with ten sticks. She died because her husband’s brother came to have sex with her. The brother is shamed, runs away to bush and dies. A Mpukey enrilank (a song, cry, lament—typical Titan cry) Very long clear, well sung enrilank. Another enrilank by same singer. I might have notes on these recordings. Also very long. Useless without in-field translation. "

Sources