Custom Stories from Epi, Vanuatu

Origin of Death  / told by Erewo Nikaura, Epi, New Hebrides

An old woman took her grandchild and they two went to the spring to bathe.  She said to the grandchild, 

“You stay here, I will go and bathe.” 

The child consented.  So she left him on the ground, and when she went to bathe she crawled out of her old skin and left it.  When she had bathed she returned to her grandchild and said,

“I will take you.” 

The grandchild saw that she was different, and was afraid to her.  Then she said,

“Are you afraid of me?  I am you grandmother.  We were together at the house, and I brought you here.” 

But he was still afraid and cried.  So the grandmother went and clothed herself again in her old skin, and came back and took him up, and she said,

 “ You were afraid of me.  If you had not been afraid of me we should all crawl out from the from our old skins and so be young men and young women ; but you were afraid of me, so we shall no more crawl out (of them) but we shall die.”