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> My neck is sore from that affair. Looking up for a long period makes for a sore neck; hence, a person who is tired of occupying an inferior position for a long time. More widely applied: One who is facing work that is beyond his capabilities. |
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> He ate his child. Reference is made again to a form of food-money cycle. When a man marries, his wife's younger brothers and sisters are "children" (ngelekel: his child). The husband and wife strive to engage them in from this particular food-money cycle: Father to daughter (wife's younger sister) -food Daughter to father-money Father to son (wife's younger brother)money Son to father-food and service. The saying may be applied to a man who marries or has sexual relations with his wife's sister, thus interrupting or jeopardizing this food-money cycle. With less strength, the sanction is applied to a man marrying any member of his wife's immediate clan (kebliil). |
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> Be strong, shallows are close Crossing the lagoon, a canoe is poled in shallow water, paddled in deep. The phrase refers to canoeists tiring after a long paddle over deep water. Applied when someone is about to give up, though better times are ahead. |
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> 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. |
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> Like coconut water, passing from darkness to darkness. Water, drunk from a coconut, passes from the dark of the nut to the dark of the mouth. Some discussions, such as those of village leaders, are secretively passed from mouth to mouth without public discussion. |
