how much of the action takes place on or in the sea—­canoeing, swimming, or surfing.  In less humanized tales the realization is much more fantastic.  To the Polynesian, mind such figurative sayings as “swift as a bird” and “swim like a fish” mean a literal transformation, his sense of identity being yet plastic, capable of uniting itself with whatever shape catches the eye.  When the poet Marvel says—­

  Casting the body’s vest aside,
  My soul into the boughs does glide;
  There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
  Then whets and combs its silver wings,
  And, till prepared for longer flight,
  Waves in its plumes the various light—­

he is merely expressing a commonplace of primitive mental experience, transformation stories being of the essence of Polynesian as of much primitive speculation about the natural objects to which his eye is drawn with wonder and delight.

Footnotes to Section III, 3:  Analogy

[Footnote 1:  Turner, Samoa, p. 220.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid.; Moerenhout, I, 407-410.]

[Footnote 3:  Turner, Samoa, pp. 216-221; Williams and Calvert, I, p. 110.]

[Footnote 4:  Williams and Calvert, I, 118.]

[Footnote 5:  Moerenhout, II, 146.]

4.  THE DOUBLE MEANING; PLAYS ON WORDS

Analogy is the basis of many a double meaning.  There is, in fact, no lyric song describing natural scenery that may not have beneath it some implied, often indelicate, allusion whose riddle it takes an adroit and practiced mind to unravel.

This riddling tendency of figurative verse seems to be due to the aristocratic patronage of composition, whose tendency was to exalt language above the comprehension of the common people, either by obscurity, through ellipsis and allusion, or by saying one thing and meaning another.  A special chief’s language was thus evolved, in which the speaker might couch his secret resolves and commands unsuspected by those who stood within earshot.  Quick interpretation of such symbols was the test of chiefly rank and training.  On the other hand, the wish to appear innocent led him to hide his meaning in a commonplace observation.  Hence nature and the objects and actions of everyday life were the symbols employed.  For the heightened language of poetry the same chiefly strain was cultivated—­the allusion, metaphor, the double meaning became essential to its art; and in the song of certain periods a play on words by punning and word linking became highly artificial requirements.[1]

Illustrations of this art do not fall upon a foreign ear with the force which they have in the Polynesian, because much of the skill lies in tricks with words impossible to translate, and often the jest depends upon a custom or allusion with which the foreigner is unfamiliar.  It is for this reason that such an art becomes of social value, because only the chief who keeps up with the fashion and the follower who