Let's first clarify one point. The island was a French protectorate. Though its name was spelt 'P A P E R', it was not pronounced like the English word, paper. The 'er' ending in French is pronounced 'ay'. Our island was called 'Papay'.

Paper, it seems, was in fact the larger, but more environmentally hostile, of two volcanic islands. The smaller member was called Garagula. This island would seem to have been home to a tribal community designated Phulu. We know little about them in general, yet we have one detailed writing by the 18th Century French anthropologist Claude Huaud. Huaud appears to have studied the Phulu from the isolated security of Paper, and perhaps even witnessed the earlier volcanic destruction of Garagula before effecting his own escape from the doomed sister isle.

Huaud left us one attempted transcript from Phulu into his native Middle French, inexpertly rendered here into English by Paraglider: Paraglider has opted to render Huaud's transcript as blank verse, iambic pentameter, which reads more naturally in English than does Huaud's hendecasyllabic line. The fact that Huaud's transcription is itself metrical strongly suggests that the Phulu original, now lost without trace, must also have been written in a verse form. Sadly, we have no way of knowing what form this might have taken. Phulu prosody died with the Phulu people.

Before the island of Garagula

was swallowed by the seas, before the day

of magurescent growth was known to man,

there lived a Grole, one of the Phulu tribe

whose tempers were comensurate with their sight

(and to a man myopia reigned supreme

in their remote domain). His name was Koph,

and on his every word his people hung,

for he was one who saw the future clear

before him, like the spider sees the fly.

And so it was that when the thunder clouds

gathered upon Mount Tharga's mighty pow

and all the land feared for the coming storm,

lest it should herald, following in its wake,

a further widening of the ominous crack

that daily inched toward Mulphala Ridge,

which, for more centuries than men could know,

had shielded Phuli from the lava lake

(and all in all been quite a useful bunny)* -

Upon that fated day, after much talk

among themselves about who should go first,

the Phulu men approached their dreaded Grole,

which is to say approached the dreaded house

wherein the dreaded nuisance dreaded lived,

and, speaking with one voice gave forth these words -

"Dread Koph, Grole of our incandescent tribe,

teller of futures, reader of the guts

of weevils, turn your eyes to yonder Mount

and tell us what to do!" The Grole replied -

Year upon year, like you, I turned my eyes

towards Mulphala Ridge. I saw the crack

widening, always widening. In my dreams

I seemed to hear the very atoms groan

in pain at separation from their kin.

Often I wakened crying out strange words,

some incantation from a distant age,

some spell, or magic charm. I pored through tomes

searching, searching, searching, for, mark this -

the land that gave you birth will know your will

if you but take the time to learn its ways.

"What are its ways, dread Grole?" - Listen to me -

All things are circles. Each thing that has being,

waxes and wanes, grows, only to recede

according to its law. Therefore do this -

Let every man among you take a slate

and grave on it his cypher. Then let each

give to his neighbour that which he has made.

Let fourteen days elapse, no less, no more,

and on the fifteenth morn let every man

give and receive one slate. Let this repeat

till every member of the Phulu tribe

has gathered, held and yielded every slate.

Then on the day when every slate once more

rests in the hands of him who gave it life,

then is the thing complete, the circle full,

and on that day the crack will start to close

and never more threaten our peaceful tribe.

BUT, if it come to pass that any man

yields not his slates, but hordes them like a thief,

thinking not of the tribe but of himself,

then, with the circle and the charm destroyed,

the great Mulphala Ridge shall break in two,

disgorge upon your heads the lava lake,

and, from the thunder clouds a voice shall cry -

Isn't it a pity some tosser has to spoil it for everybody?

*This line appears to have been inserted by a later editor.