|
> Without looking afield, it was cut down behind the house. From the folk tale concerning Mesubed Dingal, the inventor of the Palauan kite (see also No. 73). After his wife had been kidnapped, he constructed a kite using feathers from all the birds of Palau and he needed also wood from an Edebsungel tree to fashion the body of the bird-kite. After looking all over Palau and being on the point of giving up, he found the tree he needed behind his own house. The saying may be applied to anyone who does things the hard way, or who goes far afield to find something which is close at hand. |
|
> Like an old woman who is cautious about coughing and breaking wind. Among elderly women, it seems, coughing sometimes produces the unwanted effect of breaking wind. The idiom may be applied to any action that might produce an undesirable side effect, such as a hasty decision at a political meeting. As a caution, it suggests the need for leaders to consider all the consequences. |
|
> Like the cockroach of Ngerdobotar, staying on till it became white. Presumably if a cockroach remains in the darkness for a long time, as one at Ngerdobotar (in Aimeliik) apparently did, it will turn white. Application pertains to a visitor who stays on and on, especially one who is not helpful in the household. Such behavior is not properly human; the person is somehow different, like a white cockroach. |
|
> With persistence the village of Ngersuul was maintained When the men's clubs of Koror could not proceed as far as Melekeiok, a major village to the north that stood in political balance with Koror, the clubs would often stop over at Ngersuul and sack the small village. Yet the people of Ngersuul, over and over defeated, clung to their village and persisted through history. (Sometimes the village of Angaur is used, with a similar meaning, in place of Ngersuul.) The saying may be applied to the harried individual who is about to give up a task because of repeated failure. |
|
> I build it and you destroy it? May be applied to a person who feels his aims or projects are being destroyed by the actions of another. |
