Two Sharks of Fakpui

Two Sharks of Fakpui

(A Legend from Rotuma)

A man and his wife lived at Fakpui. They kept two sharks in a pool leading to the sea. There was also a stranger living with the couple. One day this stranger asked to be sent to his home in a distant land, and it was agreed that the two sharks should take him over the sea. His hosts impressed on the stranger that when he reached his home he was to pour fresh water over the heads of the sharks to get the salt out of their eyes, and before they set out on their return to point their heads in the direction of Rotuma. The stranger promised to do all this.

Rotuma 

Next day they went to the pool and the man told the sharks to take the stranger to his home. They set out together after the stranger had bid his hosts a tearful goodbye.

On arrival at the stranger's home he called out to his people to catch and cook the sharks for eating. They rushed to the beach, but the sharks escaped, reaching Fakpui after a long and trying voyage, severely wounded. They told the couple everything that had happened and the hardships they had undergone.

The woman said, “Very well, tomorrow night I will set out with you and we will get that stranger for your food.”

Accordingly they set out on the following night and in time arrived at the stranger's land. The woman went ashore at night to peep into the houses. At the third house she found the stranger, and heard him tell the people there that if they had only hurried themselves at least one of the sharks would have been caught and eaten.

The woman then planned to wait until the inmates of the house were asleep when she would go in, lie beside the stranger and gradually work the man nearest him off the mat, repeating this with the man on the other side of him. He would then be alone on the mat and easily wrapped up to be taken away. In this she succeeded and carried him down to the sharks.

They set out on their homeward journey. On their arrival at the Fakpui pool they found the man awaiting them. They carried the stranger, still wrapped in the mat and laid him on the bed he had formerly occupied. At cockcrow the stranger starter, saying, “Boys, that is like the crowing of the cock at Fakpui.” At second cockcrow he again started, with the same remark.

By this time the stones in the oven were red hot. The stranger was awakened and told of his approaching doom. He cried for mercy, but was asked what mercy he had had for the sharks, and was told that instead of him and his people eating them the sharks would eat him. The husband then clubbed the stranger and put him in the oven. When he was cooked he was taken to the sharks to be eaten not at the pool, but away near Hoflua and Hatana islands.

Hence people are never taken or eaten by sharks on the south (or Fakpui) side of the island.

Source:

The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Volume 51, No. 4, 1942 "Rotuma, its history, traditions and customs"