Having bought a
fowl from a native in a canoe, the native asked me if I wanted
"Pickaninny stop along him fella." It was not until he showed me a
handful of hen's eggs that I understood his meaning. My word, as an
exclamation with a thousand significances, could have arrived from
nowhere else than Old England. A paddle, a sweep, or an oar, is
called washee, and washee is also the verb.
Here is a letter, dictated by one Peter, a native trader at Santa
Anna, and addressed to his employer. Harry, the schooner captain,
started to write the letter, but was stopped by Peter at the end of
the second sentence. Thereafter the letter runs in Peter's own
words, for Peter was afraid that Harry gammoned too much, and he
wanted the straight story of his needs to go to headquarters.
"SANTA ANNA
"Trader Peter has worked 12 months for your firm and has not
received any pay yet. He hereby wants 12 pounds." (At this point
Peter began dictation). "Harry he gammon along him all the time
too much. I like him 6 tin biscuit, 4 bag rice, 24 tin bullamacow.
Me like him 2 rifle, me savvee look out along boat, some place me go
man he no good, he kai-kai along me.
"PETER."
Bullamacow means tinned beef. This word was corrupted from the
English language by the Samoans, and from them learned by the
traders, who carried it along with them into Melanesia. Captain
Cook and the other early navigators made a practice of introducing
seeds, plants, and domestic animals amongst the natives. It was at
Samoa that one such navigator landed a bull and a cow. "This is a
bull and cow," said he to the Samoans. They thought he was giving
the name of the breed, and from that day to this, beef on the hoof
and beef in the tin is called bullamacow.
A Solomon islander cannot say FENCE, so, in beche de mer, it becomes
fennis; store is sittore, and box is bokkis. Just now the fashion
in chests, which are known as boxes, is to have a bell-arrangement
on the lock so that the box cannot be opened without sounding an
alarm. A box so equipped is not spoken of as a mere box, but as the
bokkis belong bell.
FRIGHT is the beche de mer for fear. If a native appears timid and
one asks him the cause, he is liable to hear in reply: "Me fright
along you too much." Or the native may be fright along storm, or
wild bush, or haunted places. CROSS covers every form of anger. A
man may be cross at one when he is feeling only petulant; or he may
be cross when he is seeking to chop off your head and make a stew
out of you. A recruit, after having toiled three years on a
plantation, was returned to his own village on Malaita. He was clad
in all kinds of gay and sportive garments. On his head was a top-
hat. He possessed a trade-box full of calico, beads, porpoise-
teeth, and tobacco. Hardly was the anchor down, when the villagers
were on board. The recruit looked anxiously for his own relatives,
but none was to be seen. One of the natives took the pipe out of
his mouth. Another confiscated the strings of beads from around his
neck. A third relieved him of his gaudy loin-cloth, and a fourth
tried on the top-hat and omitted to return it. Finally, one of them
took his trade-box, which represented three years' toil, and dropped
it into a canoe alongside. "That fella belong you?" the captain
asked the recruit, referring to the thief. "No belong me," was the
answer. "Then why in Jericho do you let him take the box?" the
captain demanded indignantly. Quoth the recruit, "Me speak along
him, say bokkis he stop, that fella he cross along me" - which was
the recruit's way of saying that the other man would murder him.
God's wrath, when He sent the Flood, was merely a case of being
cross along mankind.
What name? is the great interrogation of beche de mer. It all
depends on how it is uttered. It may mean: What is your business?
What do you mean by this outrageous conduct? What do you want?
What is the thing you are after? You had best watch out; I demand
an explanation; and a few hundred other things. Call a native out
of his house in the middle of the night, and he is likely to demand,
"What name you sing out along me?"
Imagine the predicament of the Germans on the plantations of
Bougainville Island, who are compelled to learn beche de mer English
in order to handle the native labourers. It is to them an
unscientific polyglot, and there are no text-books by which to study
it. It is a source of unholy delight to the other white planters
and traders to hear the German wrestling stolidly with the
circumlocutions and short-cuts of a language that has no grammar and
no dictionary.
Some years ago large numbers of Solomon islanders were recruited to
labour on the sugar plantations of Queensland. A missionary urged
one of the labourers, who was a convert, to get up and preach a
sermon to a shipload of Solomon islanders who had just arrived. He
chose for his subject the Fall of Man, and the address he gave
became a classic in all Australasia. It proceeded somewhat in the
following manner:
"Altogether you boy belong Solomons you no savvee white man. Me
fella me savvee him. Me fella me savvee talk along white man.
"Before long time altogether no place he stop. God big fella
marster belong white man, him fella He make 'm altogether.
