Wild Woman of the Swamps
Kiwai · demigod · mythic ancestral · Recorded classification
Abere is the wild woman of the Kiwai tale-world, a dangerous solitary being of the swamps and waterways of the Fly estuary and adjacent coast. She draws men to her, and when pursued or when closing on a victim she makes rushes and reeds spring up to hide her; the men she entraps she kills. She is an individual figure of the tales and is to be distinguished from the hiwai-abére, a whole class of malignant mythical women in Kiwai belief whose designation echoes her name.
Domains
- marshland
Powers
- to make rushes and reeds grow up around her and her victims
- to lure men to her by her beauty
Sources
- Abere is the wild mythical woman of Kiwai folklore who haunts the swamps and reed-beds of the Fly estuary coast, luring men to her, concealing herself in reeds she causes to grow, and destroying her victims.: Landtman, Gunnar. The Folk-Tales of the Kiwai Papuans (Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae XLVII). Helsingfors: Printing Office of the Finnish Society of Literature, 1917. (secondary); Landtman, Gunnar. The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea: A Nature-Born Instance of Rousseau's Ideal Community. London: Macmillan, 1927. (secondary); Knappert, Jan. Pacific Mythology: An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend. London: Aquarian Press, 1992. (secondary)