43
unease until, or unless, they had been identified as being known to at least one Kau Sai resident.
A set of moorings on the western side of the bay was especially set aside for “quarantine". This did not refer to physical sickness of any kind, but to risks of spiritual pollution. Any junk on which a death, a birth or a miscarriage had occurred anchored there (with its partner, if it worked in partnership) for a required number of days. During this period of ritual quarantine, which varied according to the seriousness of the pollution, no-one living on board any other junk would board the polluted ones and no member of the polluted junks' company would board any other.
The diagram depicts an “ideal” arrangement of straight ranks which was hardly ever achieved in practice. Wind, currents, fishing plans, shore jobs, threats of bad weather to come, might bring about alterations. But in a dead calm, if everyone was at home and in his proper place, both informants and observations agreed that the lay-out would conform to the diagram.
Amongst other things the diagram indicates a tendency for agnatic kinsmen to moor near one another. It does not follow that all bearers of the same surname moored side by side. As later pages will show, the fishermen of Kau Sai did not maintain a lineage organization and their genealogical memories were shallow. Only those who recognised each other as close agnatic kin moored together. The few exceptions occurred when, as for example in the case of the Lo surname group, one recognised relative practised a different kind of fishing and was frequently absent from the anchorage.
For it is important to note that different types of fishing method required differing uses of the anchorage. Briefly, purse-seiners, who fished at night and needed space ashore to sun dry fish and nets by day, were normally present between sunrise and sunset every day, whereas liners and others who fished by day and had no such regular need for shore work used the anchorage mainly after dark and much less frequently.
43
unease until, or unless, they had been identified as being known to at least one Kau Sai resident.
A set of moorings on the western side of the bay was especially set aside for “quarantine". This did not refer to physical sickness of any kind, but to risks of spiritual pollution. Any junk on which a death, a birth or a miscarriage had occurred anchored there (with its partner, if it worked in partnership) for a required number of days. During this period of ritual quarantine, which varied according to the seriousness of the pollution, no-one living on board any other junk would board the polluted ones and no member of the polluted junks' company would board any other.
The diagram depicts an “ideal” arrangement of straight ranks which was hardly ever achieved in practice. Wind, currents, fishing plans, shore jobs, threats of bad weather to come, might bring about alterations. But in a dead calm, if everyone was at home and in his proper place, both informants and observations agreed that the lay-out would conform to the diagram.
Amongst other things the diagram indicates a tendency for agnatic kinsmen to moor near one another. It does not follow that all bearers of the same surname moored side by side. As later pages will show, the fishermen of Kau Sai did not maintain a lineage organization and their genealogical memories were shallow. Only those who recognised each other as close agnatic kin moored together. The few exceptions occurred when, as for example in the case of the Lo surname group, one recognised relative practised a different kind of fishing and was frequently absent from the anchorage.
For it is important to note that different types of fishing method required differing uses of the anchorage. Briefly, purse- seiners, who fished at night and needed space ashore to sun dry fish and nets by day, were normally present between sunrise and sunset every day, whereas liners and others who fished by day and had no such regular need for shore work used the anchorage mainly after dark and much less frequently.
:
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.