264 JOHN FRASER. 



In this same sense, Charles Kingsley eloquently says : — " Those simple- 

 hearted forefathers of ours said within themselves ' Where is the All- 

 father'? Then they lifted up their eyes to the clear, blue sky, the bound- 

 less firmament of heaven. That never changed; that was always the 

 same. The clouds and storms rolled far below it, and all the bustle of 

 this noisy world ; but there the sky was still, as bright and calm as ever. 

 The All-Father must be there, unchangeable in the unchanging heaven ; 

 bright, and pure, and boundless, like the heaven ; and like the heavens 

 too, silent and far off. So they named him after the heaven, Tuisco — 

 the God who lives in the clear heaven, the heavenly father. He was 

 the Father of Gods and men ; and man was the son of Tuisco and Hertha 

 — heaven and earth." 



Now as to the meaning and derivation of the name Tangaloa, I may 

 call to your remembrance the fact that the Anglo-Saxon god-name, 

 Tuisco, is of the same origin as the Eng. word day and Lat. dies; the 

 old Aryan root is dyu or div, ' to shine/ which gives other god-names, 

 the Sans. Dyaus and deva, the Gr. Zeus and Zen, and the Lat. Ju- 

 piter, Jovis, as well as the common noun divus. The idea common 

 to them all is that of 'bright, lustrous, beaming/ and this fits in with 

 the fact that Tangaloa dwells in the empyrean above. But, in seeking 

 for a derivation of the name Tangaloa, I call to mind the Polynesian tra- 

 dition that originally the sky lay flat on the lower world, 1 a 1 o-l a n g i, as 

 they call it, the ' under-the-sky/ and that the nine heavens, being now 

 propped up, surround the earth and envelope it on all sides. Therefore 

 I divide the name Tangaloa into two parts t a n g a and 1 o a ; in Samoan 

 the verb t a'a i, that is, t a k a i (= t a n g a i) means, to ' wind round ' like 

 an ulcer encircling a limb, and t a'a i g a is a ' roll,' of mats or tobacco 

 or the like. In the Maori dialect, t a n g a i is the ' bark ' or ' rind/ that 

 which 'envelopes/ and takai is a 'wrapper'; in Samoan tang a is a 

 'bag/ that which 'envelopes' or 'encloses/ I would therefore say that 

 the name was at first Tanga-la, then lengthened into Tanga-loa,— 'the 

 god that encompasses all things/ 'the encircling Aether'; but, as -la is 

 not a common formative in Polynesian dialects, at least so far as I know, 

 it is quite possible that -loa is a separate word, and may be the Samoan 

 1 o a, ' long/ ' far off.' 



5. The myth next goes on to say that, in his wandering to and fro in 

 the Expanse, Tangaloa one day stood still, and then there grew up papa, 

 ' a rock/ for him to rest on. In another Samoan myth, ' le Solo o le Va/ 

 Tangaloa is, at another time, weary of flying over the waste of waters, 

 and no sooner does he express a wish for a resting place, than an island 



