Ro Som, whose name Codrington glosses simply as 'Money' (Mota som, shell money), is a female spirit of Mota in the Banks Islands whose story was told to Codrington as 'not an old one,' concerning a man, Ganviviris, whom the narrator's great-grandfather had known. Ganviviris, an idle orphan, went to shoot fish at Ngerenow and struck a sauma, which carried him into a dry cave, the dwelling of Ro Som; the fish turned into a woman who said, 'Don't cry, it is I who have had pity on you.' She filled his ten money-bags with shell money overnight, so that the rafters of the house creaked, and gave him pigs, so that he rose with astonishing speed through the ranks of the Suqe society, making his suqe at Mota and building his house at Tasmate. In the end a woman came walking with a spear for a walking-stick, shell bracelets to the elbow, a boar's tusk on her right arm, her head reddened with earth and pigs' tails in her hair; she entered his house and vanished, whereupon his bags were found empty and his pigs gone, and Ganviviris sickened that night and died on the fifth day. The tale was cited as proof that wealth and rank in the Banks Islands flow from the favour of spirits.