FOLK-SONGS AND MYTHS FROM SAMOA. 367 
myth Tangaloa, the great creator-god of the Polynesians, is said to have 
had two sons, the one black in colour and the other reddish. So it may be 
that the brown inhabitants of the islands of the eastern Pacific are only 
the descendants of a fair race grafted on to a black race, the original 
‘occupants of these isles. 
The Senga of the story is a parroquet, having a remarkably bright 
crimson plumage. It is still common in Fiji and Samoa; its feathers 
are used for personal and artistic decoration, but those from Fiji are the 
most valued. This particular Senga, however, is the first progenitor of 
the present breed, for it was born, not hatched, in the first heavens, and 
was the child of semi-divine parents. So says this ‘tala.’ Nor let us 
‘wonder at that; for such fables have a place in many old mythologies; 
the classical scholar will remember the parentage of the Cretan Minotaur, 
-and even Livy’s history has now and again chapters which tell of prodi- 
gies of a similar kind. And from the Samoan Story of Creation and 
other Samoan myths which I have read to you on former occasions, it is 
evident that the Polynesians thought of the heavens as peopled by men 
and women such as we are, all except the Ninth Heavens where Tangaloa, 
the Supreme, sits alone in his Fale-ula, his ‘ Palace of Brightness,’ far 
removed from the turmoil and storms and passions of earth and the lower 
heavens. These heavens are occupied by the Sa-Tangaloa, the children 
of the creation of Tangaloa; they behave there like ordinary men, for 
they feast and chat together round the fire-light at night; they lie down 
to sleep, and the cocks crow to tell them that the day is-coming; they 
“narry and are given in marriage; up there they have the food of mortals, 
but of a more excellent kind—‘taro’ and yams and bread-fruit to eat, and 
‘Kava’ to drink ; they hold fonos or councils and talk there to their heart’s 
‘content; they have visitors from the earth below; for, if you go round 
by the north, Says this myth, you can easily get up to the sky; these 
Visitors Sometimes cheat the Sa-Tangaloa, or rob them, or steal from 
them ; sometimes they fight them and overcome them and carry off the 
Spoils of victory, as is shown in the myth (No. 31) about Losi and Malae- 
La, ‘the war of the gods and the giants.’ The heavens also have natural 
features, such as those we see on earth; there is a vaitina, a pool in which, 
it seems, the Sa-Tangaloa may bathe ; there is a puna-langi, ‘ a heavenly 
Spring,’ which issues from a cave; near this there is a raised heap of 
Stone, Something like an altar, on which offerings may be laid. In short, 
"88 $0 on there in Tangaloa’s heavens very much in the same style as 
on the Polynesian islands below. All these views of heaven show them- 
Selves in this myth and in the others which I have published. 
