SAMOAN TKADITION OF CREATION AND THE DELUGE. 171 



that have been handed down unchanged and inviolable from time 

 immemorial. 



The Chairman.— But if this be the language of, say two hundred years 

 ago, the people of the present day would be hardly able to understand it. 

 Take the case of Chaucer, who lived some five hundred years ago. How 

 many people could understand the language then employed ? For instance 

 take the following passage : 



" Whanne that April with his showris fote, 

 The frost of March hath perced to the rote," &c, 



A good many people to whom I have recited this have not known that 

 I was speaking English. Therefore, I ask whether, if this myth be in the 

 Samoan tongue of two hundred years ago, it is intelligible to the people ? 



The Author.— The Hebrew has continued, but that is a written 

 language. The Samoan is, however, preserved with great care. Your point 

 is, does the present generation understand it ? 



The Chairman.— Yes. It seems very curious if this Samoan is five 

 hundred years old that the Samoans understand it now. This, it appears 

 to me, is a singular phenomenon ; if the English of five hundred years 

 ago is scarcely intelligible except to those who have studied it, the fact that 

 the Samoan of five hundred years ago is now understood is very remarkable. 

 Chaucer died in 1400, and what I have recited from the preface to the 

 Canterbury Tales was written about 1387. 



The Author. — I have made a note of these suggestions, because I 

 think they flfi"ord food for reflection, and I am happy to hear any suggestions 

 others may be inclined to throw out. 



The Chairman.— It would be worthy of inquiry whether the language 

 used here is the old Samoan, or whether the language has been changed or 

 gradually modified by some authority, so as to render it intelligible to the 

 people at the present time. 



The Author. — The old Samoan word for Creation is foafoaga; but 

 the missionaries have chosen the word faia, and the original word has 

 become obsolete. The missionaries very often pitched on one of two 

 synonymous words, and the other being left unused became lost. The 

 natives would give me anything for these legends, but I had them on the 

 condition that I was not to give them to the natives, though I might publish 

 them in English. 



Mr. D. Howard. — How fiir is the Arabic of _the Koran the Arabic of the 

 present day ? 



The Chairman. — It is exactly the same at the present day. I never was 

 at Mecca, but I am told that the Arabic of the Koran is still the Arabic of 

 Mecca, although there are elsewhere a great many Arabic dialects. 



The meeting was then adjourned. 



