78 JOHN FRASER. 



of the giants. Mafui'e is a peaceful, although tricksome god; he quietly 

 cultivates his ' taro ' patch, and, when he is too indolent for that, he robs 

 his neighbour's oven in his own way. Like Vulcan, he is lame ; and this 

 story tells how his leg was broken ; for he gave his sister in marriage to 

 a mortal up above, who had consequently to become a drudge in his wife's 

 family for a time, as is the Samoan custom ; the wife, getting dissatisfied 

 with her brother's company and doings, ran away up to earth and re- 

 mained there ; her adopted son, Ti'i-ti'i, is the hero of this myth, and he 

 it is who makes Mafui'e lame, and does many other wonderful things, 

 now to be related. This child Ti'i-trt grew up to be a sharp and cour- 

 ageous lad. He observed that his father always left his home very early 

 in the morning at cock-crow, and was away all day. Curiosity being 

 excited, he, one night, tied the loose end of the string of his own girdle 

 to his father's leg, and so in the morning followed his father, unobserved; 

 the father, taking the road that led down to Mafui'e's land, was barred 

 first by a reed and then by a rock ; to each of these he said, ' Split open/ 

 and he passed through ; Ti'i-ti'i did the same, and passed down after 

 him. After a little, he discovered himself to his father ; and for some 

 reason of his own, resolved to provoke a quarrel with Mafui'e ; they 

 fought ; Mafui'e lost a leg and an arm, and had to sue for mercy. The 

 youth made good use of his victory ; he got from Mafui'e some valuable 

 weather-signs, as we should call them ; he brought to the upper-world 

 fire, which had not been known before, and the art of cooking by fire, 

 and the means of making fire by rubbing two sticks together, and taro 

 and yams, which require fire to cook them ; these were his spoils of 

 victory. 



Ti'i-ti'i's discovery of his father's secret, and his use of the command 

 c Eock,'rock, split open,' bear a striking resemblance to Ali Baba's ' Open, 

 sesame ' in the Eastern Tale of the ' Forty Thieves,' and the guiding 

 string, tied to his father's leg, reminds one of Ariadne's clew of thread 

 which she gave to Theseus, to guide his way in the Cretan Labyrinth, 

 when he went there to slay the Minotaur. No one can believe that the 

 Polynesians copied these incidents from anything told them by white 

 men in recent times ; we must therefore say that either we have here a 

 similarity of invention in very distant parts of the world, or that these 

 Polynesian ' talas ' have a common origin with the myths, miirchen, and 

 .sagas of European countries. 



Another interesting feature, in this ' tala,' is the action of Ti'i-ti'i's 

 foster-mother. She had no child ; and so she advises her husband to 

 take a young girl to wife, that he may have ' children by her'; she even 

 procures the girl for her husband ; then, when the child is born, she 



