Vanuatu worshippers of Prince Philip mourn his retirement

A man holds a photograph of Britain's Prince Philip in the village of Younanen on Tanna Island in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, May 6, 2017. REUTERS/Jill Gralow

TANNA ISLAND, Vanuatu // The retirement of Britain’s Prince Philip from public life made world headlines on Thursday, but his most devout and remote followers have only just heard the news.

A tribe in Vanuatu was shocked and dismayed to discover on Saturday that the man they pray to as the son of an ancestral local mountain god will likely never return to their Pacific island.

The British royal, who said he would no longer take part in public engagements, alone or alongside his wife, Queen Elizabeth II, is part of the fabric of life in the village of Younanen on Tanna Island.

Villagers pray to the 95-year-old prince daily, asking for his blessing on the banana and yam crops that make their primitive and extremely poor community self-sufficient.

“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 village chief Jack Malia.

Villagers have several photos of the prince, including one from 1980 of him in a suit, holding a club they made for him and sent to London.

“Prince Philip has said one day he will come and visit us,” said Malia, who was born in 1964. “We still believe that he will come but if he doesn’t come, the pictures that I am holding... it means nothing.”

According to local legend, the pale-skinned son of the mountain god had ventured across the seas to look for a rich and powerful bride. Anthropologists believe Philip became linked to the legend in the 1960s when Vanuatu was an Anglo-French colony known as the New Hebrides. Villagers at the time were likely to have seen portraits of Philip and the queen at government offices and police stations.

The belief that Philip was indeed the travelling son was reinforced in 1974 when he and the queen made an official visit to the New Hebrides.

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

Younanen is not marked on maps. Finding it requires a local guide and a three-hour drive through dirt trails from Lenakel, the capital of Tanna, itself little more than a shed and a shop.

There is some irony in Philip, who has been by the queen’s side throughout her 65 years on the throne, being considered a god by a primitive community thousands of kilometres away from London’s civilisation.

His reputation for making politically incorrect gaffes has been partly earned by comments about foreigners. He once advised British students not to stay too long in China for fear of becoming “slitty-eyed”.

And on a trip to Australia, he asked a group of shocked Aborigines if they still threw spears at each other.

* Reuters