they fell in with a newly-plaited cocoa-nut-leaf basket turned upside down it was a bad omen, and sent them back. If, however, the basket was an old one, and not lying across the road, but to the one side, and "fore and aft," it was a good sign, and encouraged them to proceed.

11. La'ala'a—Step over.

1. A village war god in Savaii. Supposed to go before the troops, but invisible. When the people turned out, according to hospitality usage, to take food to a travelling party, they would arrange to lay down ten pigs. If the visitors, in recounting and shouting out in public, as they do, what they had got, said that there were eleven pigs, it was supposed that the god had added one. Then they would compare notes, and say: "Oh yes, it must have been that old woman we saw with a dry shrunk leaf girdle." There were other instances of the "devil's dozen" in Samoa.

Once, when the people were driven by a war fleet from Upolu, the god became incarnate in a yellow man, went and lay down in a house, and there they killed him to please the Upolu people and stop the war, which the latter agreed to do in return for killing the god. Out of respect to the god the people of that village never used the word la'ala'a for stepping over, but sought a new word in soposopo, which is still a current synonym for la'ala'a.

2. La'ala'a was also the name of a god who took care of the plantations. He guarded them by the help of the god thunder. They never spoke of lightning as doing harm, it is always the thunder. "Thunder" once struck the house of Fala and Paongo. The family rose up, caught him, tied him up with pandanus leaves, and frightened him by poking him with firebrands. He cried out in distress: