Prince Philip tribe disappointed his retirement puts end to prospect of royal visit

Discussion in 'Other Regions' started by Space_Time, May 7, 2017.

  1. Space_Time

    Space_Time Well-Known Member

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    I already new there was South Pacific group that worshiped Prince Philip. It doesn't seem to matter that anyone can tell them he's human but they still believe he's a god. When he dies will the worship pass to Prince Charles or Prince William?

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...lt-disappointed-retirement-puts-end-prospect/

    Prince Philip tribe disappointed his retirement puts end to prospect of royal visit
    Chief Jack Malia (2nd R) from the Imanourane Tribe holds photographs of Prince Philip as he sits next to other villagers in Younanen, on Tanna Island, in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu
    Chief Jack Malia (2nd R) from the Imanourane Tribe holds photographs of Prince Philip as he sits next to other villagers in Younanen, on Tanna Island, in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu CREDIT: REUTERS
    Patrick Sawer, senior reporter
    6 MAY 2017 • 11:38AM
    Buckingham Palace may have announced his retirement from public life, but nearly 10,000 miles across the seas there is one tiny community that hopes The Duke of Edinburgh will change his mind.

    So remote is the village of Younanen that it’s inhabitants have only now received word of Prince Philip’s decision to retire.

    The reason it matters is that the villagers on the island of Tanna, in the South Pacific, revere him as the son of a local mountain god who will one day return to them.
    News of the Prince’s decision to discontinue further Royal engagements has been greeted with despondency among the locals.

    "Prince Philip has said one day he will come and visit us," Jack Malia, the village chief told a Reuters reporter who reached Younanen on Saturday.

    Holding one of several photographs of the Prince proudly displayed by the villagers, including one from 1980 in a suit, holding a club they made and sent to him in London, he added: "We still believe that he will come but if he doesn't come, the pictures that I am holding... it means nothing."

    Each day the villagers pray to Prince Philip, asking for his blessings on the banana and yam crops that sustain their poor community. They had high hopes of a visit.

    "If he comes one day the people will not be poor, there will be no sickness, no debt and the garden will be growing very well," said Mr Malia, 52, speaking at the village's Nakamal, a traditional meeting place where the men gather at night to drink.


    Prince Philip’s status among the villagers is thought to have its origins in the local legend telling of the pale-skinned son of the mountain god who ventured across the seas in search of a rich and powerful woman to marry.

    Anthropologists believe Philip became linked to the legend in the 1960s when Vanuatu was an Anglo-French colony known as the New Hebrides, now is the island nation of Vanuatu.

    Villagers at the time were likely to have seen portraits of Philip and the Queen at government offices and police stations run by colonial officials.

    The belief that the Duke of Edinburgh was indeed the mountain god’s wandering son was reinforced when he accompanied the Queen on an official visit to the New Hebrides in 1974.

    The Prince was told of the cult by John Champion, the British Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides, who suggested he send them a portrait of himself.

    In turn the villagers dispatched him a traditional pig-killing club called a nal-nal, with which the Prince posed for a portrait sent to back to Younanen and since handed down to each chief.

    "Prince Philip is important to us because our ancestors told us that part of our custom is in England," said Mr Malia, who took over from his father as village chief in 2003.

    Younanen is not marked on maps and reaching it requires a local guide and a three-hour drive through dirt trails from Lenakel, the capital of Tanna.

    Village children play naked, the women dressed in traditional grass skirts while the men, clothed in old t-shirts, usually carry machetes.

    Mr Malia added that Philip, who turns 96 in June, had told villagers not to ever take money from people who visited, but that they should accept food, like rice, to share among themselves.

    The villagers also associate natural phenomena with the Prince. In March 2015 it was reported they were convinced that a cyclone which ravaged parts of Vanuatu, killing at least 11 people, was nature's dramatic curtain-raiser to the Duke of Edinburgh visiting the country the following year.

    Asked whether Philip's blessings would help with the tropical storms that often batter the islands, such as the Category 4 Cyclone Donna currently passing over the archipelago's north, Mr Malia said that wasn't generally in his remit as they generally flowed up from the south.
     
  2. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    I suppose it's about as vaild as any other religion.
     
  3. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    I forgot about these people.
     
  4. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    I didn't end too well for James Cook in Hawaii.
     

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