262 JOHN FKASER. 



Introduction — 1. All nations have traditions or speculations as to 

 their own origin, and these often include a Cosmogony, by which they 

 endeavour to account for the existence of the world, or at least of their 

 own land, and for the creation of men to be its inhabitants. Our own 

 Australian blacks, whom some ethnologists wrongly describe as the 

 lowest of human beings, speak of a great Creator, known by such tribal 

 names as Baiamai, Punjil, Nuralli, who made them and all things, and 

 who still lives in the heavens above ; in the work of creation, he carried 

 a great knife, with which to shape the work of his hands ; in this work 

 he is assisted by a demiourgos whom the Kamalarai tribe call Dharamulan, 

 and certain birds and animals are also associated with him as agents ; 

 Punjil first made two men, each of a lump of clay, which he gradually 

 fashioned from the feet upwards into the human form ; and, as the 

 figures grew in symmetry and beauty, he danced round them, well 

 satisfied with his work ; then he breathed very hard on them and they 

 lived, and began to move about as full-grown men. The one had straight 

 hair, and the other had curly hair. 



2. Punjil' s brother had control of all waters, great and small ; and so, 

 one day, he brought up by a hook from a muddy pool two young women, 

 and they became the companions of the two men. Some time after, 

 Punjil came down and visited the camp of the blacks; and, becoming 

 very angry, he used his great knife on the men, women, and children 

 there, and cut them into very small pieces, which still lived and wriggled 

 about like worms ; these he carried into the sky, and then dropped them 

 wherever he pleased ; the pieces became men and women, and peopled 

 the whole land. Baiamai gave to the blacks their sacred songs and their 

 social institutions. 



There is not much of a Cosmogony in this tale, for it tells us only how 

 men were brought into being, and how Australia came to be occupied by 

 straight-haired and curly-haired blacks ,• but I have introduced it here, 

 because it bears some relation to the Polynesian myth which I am now 

 to make known to you. 



3. The Polynesian race of the Eastern Pacific has an elaborate system 

 of Cosmogony, which aims at explaining how the heavens were created 

 and sustained, how gods and men came to be, how their own islands 

 arose ; but the details thereof vary much as given by the wise men in 

 the various groups. Of these varying forms of the great Myth of 

 Creation, the one I have here from Samoa seems to me to be the purest 

 and the noblest, and to be the original from which the others have come. 

 Any one who knows Polynesia would reasonably expect this to be so, for, 



