380 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MYTHS. 



impress of tlie Bible^ tliougli the Hottentot declared that lie had 

 received it from his forefathers, and had never seen or heard 

 of a missionary. Mr. Moffat was puzzled, and suspended his 

 judgmeiit till, a little while afterwards, the mystery was un- 

 ravelled by the appearance of the very missionary from whom 

 the native story-teller had received his teaching.^ As another 

 case of the same kind, may be quoted the following servile 

 version of the story of Joseph and his brethren, found in Ha- 

 waii as the story of Waikelenuiaiku. His father had ten sons 

 and one daughter ; he was beloved by his father, and hated by 

 his brethren, and they threw him into a pit, but his eldest 

 brother felt more compassion for him than the rest. He es- 

 caped out of the pit, into the country of King Kamohoalii, and 

 there he was confined in a dungeon with the prisoners. He 

 bade his companions di'eam, and interpreted the dreams of four 

 of them. One had seen a ripe banana, and his spirit ate it, the 

 next dreamt of a banana, and the next of a hog, in the same 

 way, but the fourth dreamt that he saw a-wa, that he pressed 

 out the juice, and his spirit drank it. The three first dreams 

 the foreigner interpreted for evil, and the dreamers were put 

 to death in course of time, but to the fourth he prophesied de- 

 liverance and life, and he was saved, and told the King, who 

 set Waikelenuiaiku at liberty, and made him a principal chief 

 in the kingdom.^ 



There is sometimes a crudeness about these tales adopted 

 from foreign sources, which gives us the means of positively 

 condemning them. But the power which myths have of tak- 

 ing root the moment they are transplanted into a new country, 

 often makes it impossible to tell whether they are of old date 

 and historical value, or mere modern intruders. There is rea- 

 son to believe that a story carried into a distant place by civi- 

 lized men may spread and accommodate itself to the circum- 

 stances of the country, so that in a very few years^ time it 

 may be quite honestly collected as a genuine native tale, even 

 by the very people who originally introduced it, like the farmer's 

 hack that he sold in the morning, and bought back in the af- 



1 Moffat, ' Missionary Labours, etc., in S. Africa ;' London, 1842, p. 126. 



2 Hopkins, ' Hawaii ;' London, 1862, p. 67. 



