“LEAD KINDLY LIGHT.”

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 57, Issue 245, 28 July 1937, Page 9

“LEAD KINDLY LIGHT.”

AS SOUTH SEA ISLANDERS KNOW IT. No prizes are offered to any of you who can recognise this famous hymn. Not that I think many of you would. Now then, all together. “All this road me walk-about Many holes; stop me. Me ’fraid too much me fall down along him

You helping me. Suppose you me two feller go one time Ale no can fall; all same me go along day.” Guessed it?

The hymn is “Lead, Kindly Light,” as literally translated from the language of South Seai Islanders in Papua and Polynesia. They study their hymns in the “Methodist Him Buk,” and here are some other native expressions, as reported to the recent Australian Missionary Conference at Sydney, Ne'-v South. Wales. A “Bishop” they call “Number one Topside, Heavenly Walkee Man.” A saw becomes “Brother him belong tomahawk, he come, he go,” while a piano is grandly and graphically termed “Box suppose you fight him he cry.” Sometimes even missionaries, who study this language carefully, slip up rather badly. For instance, the word “laralaraaga” used to mean, 20 years ago, a chief’s attendant. As such the missionaries used it in their prayers. Now the' missionaries have found this word means a gay dog who stays out all night and kicks up a row when he comes home with the coconut-milk. For years the missionaries had been praying to he made real lads of village!