from a post to Anthro-L.

(two short follow-up posts attempting to unravel the mysteries are to found here and here).

I'm thinking about this story, from Papua New Guinea, found in an old edition of Man:

Crops in the village gardens are being destroyed each night. The men decide to watch. One boy hears animals entering his father's garden - pigs. He throws his spear and wounds one of them, which runs off with the spear head in its body. The boy's father is angry and tells him that he must recuperate the spear-head. The boy sets out, following the trail of blood. The blood leads to a muddy river. He sets one foot in the water, and he sees it changing into a pig's trotter. He has no choice but to continue. When he emerges on the opposite bank, he has become a pig.

He continues. The trail of blood leads to another river. He steps into it, and the clear water changes him back into a human being. Now the blood leads him to a village. He asks if he may stay. He is allowed to do so, but the villagers are distracted - the chief's daughter is ill. He asks to see her, and as they take him to the hut in which she lies, he notices that the blood leads to its door. He tells the chief that he is a doctor, and that he can save the girl. The chief tells him that if he does so, he can have her for his wife.

The boy steps into the forest and picks up some pebbles. Then he goes into the girl's hut and tells all the others to leave. When they have done so, he feels for the wound where his spear entered the pig. He finds it, thrusts his hand into it and pulls out his spear-head. Then he wipes the blood on the pebbles, wraps them in grass, and calls the others back into the hut. He gives them the blood-soaked package, and tells them to take it far into the forest and throw it away.

The young woman recovers and marries the young man. He lives in her father's village for some years, during which she gives birth to two sons and a daughter. The young couple are happy enough, but the husband notices that his wife is often restless in the evenings and would like to go outside; he prevents her from doing so. Then he decides that he should return to his own village, for it is not the custom for a man to live in his wife's home. He sets out with his family. They ford the first river without incident. However, when they come to the second, he decides to take precautions ; while his wife and children are sleeping, he attaches them to a log. Then he builds a bridge across the river. He begins to push the log over the bridge, but his wife awakes, cries out and struggles against her bonds. She falls into the river. The children are awoken by her cries, and the two boys manage to break free and dive in to join their mother. The girl, however, is too tightly fastened to do so. The woman and her two sons turn into pigs and run off into the forest, never to be seen again.

The man returns to his village, where at first he is taken for a ghost. However, he shows his father the spear-head, and is finally accepted. He tells them that he found the little girl wandering in the forest and brought her back with him.

The girl grows, and becomes a wife. She has a daughter of her own. She is considered a beauty, but there is something strange about her eyes ; the men of the village call her 'Miss Piggy'.

Chris Knight, in 'Blood Relations', reports another story from PNG recorded by Gell. Knight writes :
 

The Umeda hunter 'cannot eat any part of the animal he has killed - a kind of incest taboo on meat'. Gell gives a good story highlighting woman's role in enforcing this rule :  

     The myth ... concerns a man who hunts in the forest killing a pig, but instead of taking it home to his wife, he eats it by himself in the forest (hubris). The wife finds out her husband's crime and turns herself and her children into pigs (by donning pig tusk nose ornaments) and eventually gores her husband to death (nemesis).

There seems to be something to be made of this. Women/sons/pigs stand over against men and spears. Knight is attempting to make his case for the exchange of sex against meat as lying at the centre of culture : the own-kill rule (you do not eat your own kill (your own flesh)) is in this intimately related to the incest rule (you do not copulate with your own sister (your own flesh)).

I am wondering if the own-kill rule begins to be under considerable pressure when gardens arise, and that this may be related to whether marriage is patri-local or matri-local. Does this make any sense?

Comments to me at tmason@timothyjpmason.com.