Original subtitles

Specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this Collection, Sir David Attenborough has chosen documentaries

from the start of his career.

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MALAGASY VALIHA MUSIC

We went to Madagascar primarily to look for animals.

But we hadn't been there long before we became fascinated,

and, indeed, enchanted, by the people.

You might suppose that their island, lying as close as it does

to the continent of Africa -

after all, this is only 250 miles across there -

you might suppose that these people would have their origins here.

But not at all. In fact, the people who live

in the centre part of Madagascar

originally came from right across the other side of the Indian Ocean,

here, in the Malayan region.

There are lots of clues to this unlikely origin of theirs.

One is their language.

I found that I could use some of the Malayan words

I learned in Indonesia a few years ago, words like "anak", a child,

or "mati", dead, "nusa", an island,

and be understood quite easily by the Madagascans, or the Malagasy,

as they're quite often called,

because, in fact, the words are almost the same.

Another clue is their music, and the instruments they use,

the music you heard a few seconds ago. Listen to a little more of it.

The instrument is called a valiha.

It's nothing more than a length of bamboo, with up to 20 strings

stretched along its length.

Originally, these were thin fibres cut from the surface of the bamboo.

But these days, most valihas, like this one, have strings of metal.

But this is not an African instrument.

To find one like it, you have to go across the Indian Ocean

to the Far East, to Malaya, Siam and Burma.

Nor does the player have his origins in Africa.

Like most of the people of this part of Madagascar,

he's light complexioned with straight hair,

quite unlike the frizzy-haired Negroes of Africa.

He belongs to the noble class of Madagascar, the Hova,

and his instrument, indeed, is a sign of his nobility,

for traditionally, it was forbidden to be played by low-born people.

Merina, the country of the Hova, lies in the centre of Madagascar,

beautiful and fertile, and, because of its altitude, deliciously cool.

And here, too, there is little to remind you of Africa.

The houses, tall and two-storeyed, are built of bright red bricks.

But, most typical of all,

every fold of the brown hills is terraced into paddy fields,

for the Madagascan people grow not corn or cassava, as the Africans do,

but rice, the typical crop of Asia.

We had arrived at the end of the dry season,

when the fields were still bare, awaiting the rains

and the planting out of the young rice seedlings.

This season, when the land is about to spring into life again,

is a time of deep significance, the moment when,

with great festivities, the graves of the dead must be opened.

MUSICIANS PLAY

The people of Madagascar worship their ancestors.

It is the ancestors who prevent sickness or poverty

from overwhelming a family,

the ancestors who grant that a woman should be able to bear children.

But the dead lead a miserable existence

in the silence and solitude of the tomb,

so they must therefore be brought out regularly

and entertained, with music and with dancing.

The music must be loud, for it might be that the spirits of the dead

have left the graves temporarily and are journeying

about the countryside, in which case they must be called back

by the music, so that they may enjoy the entertainments prepared for them.

Now the bodies, wrapped in mats and silk winding sheets,

are brought out from the grave.

LOUD CHATTERING

It would be wrong to keep quiet at this moment,

for quietness is a sign of sulkiness and bad temper.

It is a rule, therefore, that everyone present must carry on

a lively conversation, whatever their inner feelings,

for the ancestors, after the silence of the grave,

wish to hear people talk.

Indeed, this should be a happy occasion,

and any person from Merina who dies away from his country

will leave instructions that his body must be brought back,

from whatever distance, to be placed in the family tomb,

so that his spirit will have the pleasure

of joining in these festivals.

The ceremony is an expensive one.

The musicians must be paid,

fresh silk wrappings provided for the corpses,

everyone must wear new clothes, and a great deal of food must be prepared

to feed the assembled company and to be offered to the ancestors.

The whole of a family's income may be devoted to it.

But it is a feast in which everyone is happy to take part.

It is a matter of pride and honour to hold such a ceremony.

A man who failed to do so would be despised

and be called unfit to bear his father's name,

for it is taboo to let people lie in a tomb uncared for.

Only the ancestors of dogs, they say, are left like that.

It's forbidden that the ancestors should be laid on the bare earth,

so they're placed on a small platform specially prepared for them.

CHATTER AND MUSIC

Now that all the bodies have been removed, they must be entertained.

Each body must be given a new, and splendid, winding sheet

of pure silk, scarlet, green and blue,

with small glass beads woven into its fabric.

These lambas, as they're called, are extremely expensive,

and are used for no other purpose.

It would be unthinkable for any living person to make use of them.

The onlookers must be shown that each lamba is of the very best quality

and of the correct size, so that they may witness

that proper respect is being paid to the spirits of the dead.

Strips are torn from the lambas to serve as bindings.

It would be improper to use anything

but this special material for such a purpose.

The bodies, many of them consisting of little more than dust,

are possessed of a strong magical power,

and barren women, anxious to bear children,

may take some of the old wrappings as potent charms

to grant them fertility.

Even though the onlookers may feel deeply moved at this moment,

they must not show their feelings.

Weeping is forbidden, for the ancestors must be made

to feel that they are welcome into the world of the living.

CHATTER

The ceremony continues for two or three days,

and, throughout this time, there must be music

and dancing to keep the ancestors entertained, as they lie in

their new silken wrappings on the platform outside the open grave.

Sometimes they will be taken in procession around the rice fields,

so that they may see that their family land,

which once they tilled, is still being well cared for.

Cattle, too, may be herded close to the tomb

so that the ancestors may inspect them.

As the time approaches for the bodies to be returned to the grave,

the senior members of the family take part in a formal dance.

LOCAL BAND PLAYS

There is little here of the frenzied, uninhibited dances of Africa.

Instead, the control and the gestures of the hands and arms

recall the traditions of Java and Malaya.

The end of the feast has come, and the ancestors must be carried

ceremonially around the tomb before they're returned to it.

Perhaps the emphasis on fertility in this macabre festival,

and its timing in the season of the spring planting,

are clues which link it with the rituals that were once practised

in pre-Christian Europe, and which still survive all over the world -

rituals designed to ensure the fertility of the fields

after the dead, barren months of winter.

In all of them, animals or ancestors

or gods are symbolically resurrected, in the belief that,

by bringing them to life in ritual,

the earth will not fail to bear fruit again.

But if this is so, the Madagascans are largely unaware of it.

To them, the festival is a sensible and honourable duty,

the acknowledgement of the dependence of the living

on the spirits of the dead.

It is the dead who control the destinies of the living.

It is they who bestow prosperity, health and fertility.

In return for their help and benevolence,

the living must care for them and entertain them

and not abandon them to lie neglected and mouldering in the tomb.

From the highland country of Merina, we drove south and west

towards the villages of a quite different people, the Mahafaly.

They are fisherfolk, and, each morning, before the sun rises,

fleets of square-sailed outrigger canoes set off to fish for tunny.

The fish they bring back is highly valued

and traded all over the island.

Some, when dried in the sun, is exported to the islands

of Reunion and Mauritius, nearly 1,000 miles away.

But there are a tremendous number of taboos which govern the fishing.

A man will never take an orange or a lemon with him

in his canoe, for this will make it certain that he won't catch anything.

Walking underneath a net or a fish trap has a similar result.

And setting out on a fishing trip straight after a meal

is absolutely certain to prevent you from catching anything.

If a man should steal another man's net, he will surely get leprosy.

If a stranger, standing on the beach, asks for a fish,

he will be presented with it as a gift, and not be allowed to pay,

for if you expect a generous catch the following day,

you must be generous towards other people.

But that taboo operates only on the beach, close to the sea.

Back in the village, the fish can be sold for a proper price,

without risking any ill effects on the next day's catch.

These people, as can be judged from their features,

are predominantly of African origin. Yet they, too,

like the different people of Merina in the centre of the island,

revere and worship their ancestors.

Not far from the coast, we found one of their tombs.

The Mahafaly people do not bring out the bodies of their ancestors

as the Merina people do.

Their funerals, however, are very elaborate rituals,

accompanied by great sacrifices of cattle, the horns of which

are placed on top of the tomb as symbols of power and protection.

Regular offerings for the ancestors are placed in the bowls.

In central Madagascar, we had seen hardly any carving,

but the Mahafaly people are famed for the skill of their sculptors.

Each of these beautiful memorial posts

is surmounted by figures of the humped zebu cattle,

which are the main wealth of the people.

This is not a simple grave, but more of a monument,

for the chamber itself may be 20 feet underground

at the end of a long, sloping passage.

Ancestor cults are practised by all the tribes of Madagascar,

and 600 miles away from this tomb lay the sacred lake of Anivorano.

Years ago, they say, this was the site of a prosperous village,

but the inhabitants were mean.

Once, a wandering witch doctor was refused a drink

by every villager, except one old woman.

In gratitude, the sorcerer warned her to leave the village immediately,

taking her children with her.

She did, and soon afterwards the whole settlement and its people

were submerged by a great flood.

The old woman's descendants still live close by,

and they come to the lakeside

whenever they need their ancestors' help.

For they believe that the inhabitants of the submerged village

still live on, as crocodiles.

On this occasion, it was a woman who had not yet borne a child

who had come with the rest of the villagers

to summon her ancestors, so that she may seek their aid.

Within minutes of the beginning of their chant,

the crocodiles appeared far out in the centre of the lake.

WOMEN CHANT

A cow was sacrificed.

Each of these crocodiles is known individually and recognised.

Each has a name -

a name which it shares with some of the children in the village.

CHANTING

The meat of the sacrificed cow is cut up into small pieces.

CHANTING CONTINUES

Had the ancestors refused to accept the meat,

it would have been taken as a sign

that the woman's prayer would be ignored.

But now all was well.

One by one, the crocodiles came to eat the sacrificial meal.

CHANTING CONTINUES

I wondered how genuine and sincere this ceremony was.

Obviously the crocodiles had learned that the sound of the chant

was a sign that soon they would be fed.

And accordingly, they came to the lakeside as soon as they heard it.

But this ceremony was not being held

merely for the pleasure of feeding crocodiles.

For one thing, these creatures are hated and feared

over most of Madagascar.

Every year, they kill women and children.

For another, a cow is highly valued

and its sacrifice is an expensive one.

Yet the chief of the village told me that three times

during the previous month alone, a sacrifice like this had been made.

Belief in the value and efficacy of the ceremony

was still obviously deeply rooted.

When it was over, the skull of the sacrificed cow was placed on a pole.

Poles exactly like this, surmounted by the skulls of cows or deer,

have been found in the remains of prehistoric Stone Age villages

that once stood 10,000 years ago by the lakes of Europe.

We were to find, everywhere we went in this great island,

that ancestors were revered and worshipped,

And that many people believe that their forebears lived on,

not just as spirits, but as many different animals.

Here in the forests of the east,

there were many such beliefs concerning the wild creatures.

And as I was there to catch animals, I had to be most careful what I did

if I were not to offend the local people.

There was one creature I especially wanted to catch,

but there were many areas in which I dared not even look for it,

for the people would have been most upset had I unwittingly

interfered with one of their ancestors,

even though I might not have recognised it as such.

Fortunately, this particular part of the forest

was beyond the tribal boundaries of the people who held this belief,

and I, therefore, was able to hunt, without fear of offending anyone.

And this is the creature I was looking for.

A boa constrictor.

And here is this same snake. It's not, of course, a poisonous snake.

If it were, I wouldn't be holding it quite as happily as I am doing now.

Er, neither would I have picked it up quite so happily,

as I did in the first instance.

I'd have used a stick or taken some precaution of that sort.

In fact, it's a constricting snake that kills its prey not with poison

but by squeezing, as he isn't doing at the moment,

I'm happy to say, but sometimes he will squeeze your arm really hard.

There are two sorts of constricting snake in the world -

pythons and boas.

And the typical constrictor of Africa is the python.

So you might have suspected that this snake would be a python.

But it's not. It's a boa, and its nearest relative is in South America.

The difference between pythons and boas

is not very great at first sight.

Indeed, if you're presented with the skeleton of one...

..the only way you can tell the difference

is the presence of a bone in the skull, which the python has

and the boa doesn't have. Now it's giving me a bit of a squeeze.

But there is a more fundamental difference between pythons and boas,

and that is that pythons lay eggs, whereas the boas,

this snake, gives birth to live young.

And indeed, this is a female,

and soon after we got her back to the London Zoo,

she produced several little babies for us.

I've got one of them here,

but before I show it to you I'd better just get rid of Mother.

Thank you very much.

Now, I'm going to be a bit careful how I handle this one

because the babies are very frisky indeed

and liable to strike at pretty well anything.

The fact that they're constrictors doesn't mean that they don't strike.

They've got to get their teeth in their prey to start with,

before they start squeezing them to death. Now, come out.

There.

There is a popular belief that a snake, when it strikes,

has considerable force behind its blow,

but that, in fact, is not true.

Indeed, the front of a snake's snout is very delicate indeed,

and very sensitive.

What it does is to time its strike very accurately,

like a boxer timing a punch, so that when it meets its prey

its mouth is open and its teeth can engage.

But that is why it's really very unkind and cruel

if you irritate a snake in a zoo

and get it to strike at your finger beyond the glass,

because all it does is hurt itself badly,

as it smashes its head against the unseen glass.

This little snake is bright red in colour which rather surprised me

because its parent is olive green.

But it's a very nice little creature and we were delighted to get it.

It was, sort of, two for the price of one, as it were.

The fact that there are a lot of legends associated with these snakes

is not really surprising because, in point of fact,

there's barely an animal in the whole of Madagascar

that doesn't have some sort of taboo associated with it.

We were there looking for, particularly, lemurs.

There are over 20 different species in the island,

all of them strange, primitive, monkey-like creatures

that live nowhere else in the world.

And there's barely a single sort that doesn't have

some sort of legend associated with it.

Even their scientific name, "Lemures",

comes from the Latin word which means "ghosts of the dead" -

given to them, perhaps, because some of them

make weird, unsettling howls during the middle of the night in the forest

which can be quite alarming.

This is perhaps the most splendid and spectacular of them all,

the lovely ruffed lemur.

But I'll tell you about him next time.

MALAGASY VALIHA MUSIC