Page 5 Advertisements Column 1

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3427, 19 January 1912, Page 5

“Fashions along Now Guinea,’' according to the annual report of the Commonwealth Government issued last week, are curious in many respects. A resident magistrate remarks upon the large number (82) of. sorcery charges in his district during the vear. The majority were due to the practice of a strong tribe in demanding pigs from their weaker neighbors on. the threat of their “sorcerers making pouripouri and bringing disasters and death to the tribe.” Such threats are potent. “The Kubir people,” continues the report, “promptly handed, over the required pigs and other articles, more apparently from fear of pouri-pouri than of any actual violence. News was brought to tho Government, and a summons sent to the offenders to come in. This they did, and candidly admitted the offence. As -we are makin'g every effort to destroy superstition • among the natives, the leaders were sent to gaol for three months and the others for a month.” Deaths are all put down by the natives to sorcery and payment demanded in pigs. Sometimes the friends of the dead make pounpouri to kill the supposed murderer. At other times they go to the magistrate and want to lay a charge of murder, .When still unsatisfied they d&mandi pigs. Mr J. F. Hogan has been explaining the origin and significance of the mongrel word “barracking” to the Londoners. He says: “Even thus early in the tour of the M.C.C. team the word ‘barracking’ is becoming conspicuous. But it might be. more accurately called chaff. Australian crowds like to. comment audibly on the game, and this fact makes cricket far more lively at the Antipodes than it is here, professor Morris, in his dictionary of Australian English, says the word dates from. 1880. It originally denoted the excited, cries of th© crowds at football matches. It fc'has nothing to do with barking or barracks. It comes from the aboriginal ‘borak,’. which, in the language or the Australian blacks, means banter, or fun at another’s expense. To ‘poke borack’ is one of tho earliest recorded specimens .of Australian slang. In the height of Summer there is northing so refreshing as Martell s Brandy -and soda.*