GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OP MYTHS. 347 



robes that gave the nymphs their power of flying, and so he 

 caught Utahagij the one whose robe he had stolen, and took 

 her for his wife, and she bore him a son. Now she was called 

 Utahagi from a single white hair she had, which was endowed 

 wdth magic power, and this hair her husband pulled out. As 

 soon as he had done it, there arose a great storm, and Utahagi 

 went up into heaven. The child cried for its mother, and 

 Kasimbaha was in great grief, and cast about how he should 

 follow Utahagi up into the sky. Then a rat gnawed the thorns 

 off the rattans, and he clambered up by them with his son upon 

 his back till he came to heaven. There a little bird showed 

 him the house of Utahagi, and after various adventures he took 

 up his abode among the gods.^ 



From Celebes to New Zealand the distance is some four 

 thousand miles, but among the Maoris a tale is found which is 

 beyond doubt of common origin with this. There was once a 

 great chief called Tawhaki, and a girl of the heavenly race, 

 whose name was Tango-tango, heard of his valour and his 

 beauty and came down to earth to be his wife, and she bore a 

 daughter to him. But when Tawhaki took the little girl to a 

 spring and had washed it, he held it out at arm^s length and 

 said, " Faugh, how badly the little thing smells." When 

 Tango-tango heard this, she was bitterly offended and began 

 to sob and weep, and at last she took the child and flew up to 

 heaven with it. Tawhaki tried to stop her and besought her 

 to stay, but in vain, and as she paused for a minute with one 

 foot resting on the carved figure at the end of the ridge-pole 

 of the house, above the dooi", he called to her to leave him 

 some remembi-ance of her. Then she told him that he was 

 not to lay hold of the loose root of the creeper, which dropping 

 from aloft sways to and fro in the air, but rather to lay fast 

 hold on that which hanging down from on high has again 

 struck its fibres into the earth. So she floated up into the air 

 and vanished, and Tawhaki remained mourning : at the end 

 of a month he could bear it no longer, so he took his younger 

 brother with him, and two slaves, and started to look for his 



' Schirreii, p. 126. Compare Bornean story, Bp. of Labuan in Tr. Etli. See, 

 1863, p. 27. 



