SOME FOLK-SONGS AND MYTHS FROM SAMOA. 265 



rises up from the deep for him. In both cases, there is no laborious work 

 of creation ascribed to him, but his wish or his need at once produces 

 the result desired. There is certainly some dignity in this. 



The word papa, in Samoan, means c rock/ but in other dialects it also 

 means ' foundation/ 'anything level or flat/ and pal a, means ' mud/ 

 Now I take the myth here to indicate that, by the exercise of his will 

 alone, Tangaloa caused to spring up, out of chaos, first the solid foun- 

 dation-material out of which the Earth, the Sea, the Sky, were afterwards 

 evolved by separate fiats or acts of creation ; for the myth then declares 

 that he spake to the Rock, saying ' Be thou split open,' and there came 

 forth, as if by successive efforts of parturition, various kinds of founda- 

 tion-stuff, then the Earth, then the Sea, and Fresh-water, and the Sky, 

 and ' Prince-Prop-up-sky/ and Immensity, and Space, and Height, and, 

 last of all, Man, as a physical being, but not yet endowed with intelli- 

 gence. Unlike the original papa, all of these come into existence, not 

 at his will, but by the power of a separate command of evolution for each. 



I am not much concerned to explain how, on natural principles, the 

 Sea, and the Sky, and Man himself, can have been produced by this papa, 

 but the succession of ideas in this Samoan myth is consistent ; for first 

 comes the Rock or Foundation — the physical origin of all things — then 

 the varieties of rock, which are soon united to form the Eerth ; then the 

 Sea, 'le tai/ is made to surround the Earth and lave its shores; then 

 its counterpart, f 1 e v a i/ Fresh-water, appears on the Earth ; hitherto 

 Earth and Sky had been as one, but now the Sky is lifted up above the 

 earth and secured in its place by props ; then the dimensions Length, 

 Breadth and Height appeared ; and then, all things being ready for him, 

 Man came upon the scene. 



6. But Man was yet a dull, inert mass of matter ; so Tangaloa created 

 Spirit, and Heart, and Will, and Thought, and put them within him, and 

 thus Man became a living soul. Here the myth duly recognises the com- 

 posite nature of man, and that too with a precision scarcely to be expected 

 from Polynesians. 



7. The Kosmos had been, to some extent, arranged already as Land, 

 Sea, and Sky, but now that Man is to dwell on earth, Tangaloa proceeds 

 to make him comfortable ; and so he sends Immensity and Space, as a 

 wedded pair, to dwell in the sky above ; he bids another pair, ' Two-clouds ' 

 and ' Two-fresh-water-bottles/ attend to the supply of water from the 

 clouds, and another pair to people the Sea. Meanwhile the man and his 

 wife are to people the earth on its southern side. But now a catastrophe 

 seems to have happened, for Tui-te'e-langi, the Polynesian Atlas, found 



