Even when
he has caught his fish and landed with them, the buyer must still
not address him by his proper name, but must only call him _mwele;_
for even then, if the spirits were to hear his proper name, they
would either bear it in mind and serve him out another day, or they
might so mar the fish he had caught that he would get very little
for them. Hence the fisherman can extract heavy damages from anybody
who mentions his name, or can compel the thoughtless speaker to
relieve him of the fish at a good price so as to restore his luck.
When the Sulka of New Britain are near the territory of their
enemies the Gaktei, they take care not to mention them by their
proper name, believing that were they to do so, their foes would
attack and slay them. Hence in these circumstances they speak of the
Gaktei as _o lapsiek,_ that is, "the rotten tree-trunks," and they
imagine that by calling them that they make the limbs of their
dreaded enemies ponderous and clumsy like logs. This example
illustrates the extremely materialistic view which these savages
take of the nature of words; they suppose that the mere utterance of
an expression signifying clumsiness will homoeopathically affect
with clumsiness the limbs of their distant foemen.
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