266 JOHN FRASEK. 



himself unable any longer to support the weight of the sky, and so it fell 

 down on earth once more. Then Tui bethought him of two native plants 

 that grow, spread out a-top like an umbrella ; with these he propped up 

 the sky, and it has never fallen since ! In this connection, it is curious to 

 note that our Australian Aborigines believe similarly that the sky is held 

 up by props, and they have a tradition that the props once broke, and 

 then the wizards had great work to do in getting the sky propped up 

 again. 



8. The wedded pair, Immensity and Space, that had a little before 

 been removed from the earth to the' sky, now brought forth children — 

 Night and Day, and these two, by their united action, produced the Sun 

 and the Stars ; these two dwell in the First Heavens, the region of alter- 

 nate darkness and brightness. Immensity and Space next gave birth 

 to Le-Langi, ' the clear, blue sky'; that is the Second Heavens. Langi 

 then produces all the other heavens up to the Ninth, and each of these is 

 peopled by Immensity and Space. All this means that, above the cloud 

 land of the First Heavens, everything is serene, calm, and clear, and 

 everywhere there is illimitable extension of space. So it must have ap- 

 peared, at all events, to the earliest myth-makers, when they turned their 

 thoughts from earth to heaven. 



9. Our myth now turns to the creation of the other gods ; every one of 

 these, however, is a Tangaloa, and is therefore not a separate and inde- 

 pendent being, but only a phase, as it were, of the supreme Tangaloa — 

 a distinct manifestation of himself in some one or other of his functions. 

 These he created, but the word used here, fa'a-tupu, only implies that 

 he ' caused them to grow up ' or to be. Of all these facets of himself, he 

 makes Tangaloa-le-f uli, ' the immoveable/ to be the chief, for up there, 

 in his domain, the Ninth Heavens, the clouds ' never roll along' (le f u li), 

 the storms below never come nigh, and all is tranquillity and peace. 



10. The myth next shows the Samoan pride of race, for it makes Samoa 

 and Manu'a to be brothers of the Sun and the Moon. And yet we can- 

 not believe that the Polynesians are akin to the rulers of the Celestial 

 Empire. After these, the other islands of the Pacific, as known to Samoans, 

 — Tonga and Fiji and the Eastern groups— are made to spring up at the 

 will of ' Tangaloa-the-creator-of -lands/ This is a much more dignified 

 account of things than that which is given in some other Polynesian 

 legends, which say that, while one of the gods was engaged fishing in the 

 sea, he pulled up with his line an island here and there ; and that had 

 not the line at last broken with the pull, some of these islands might 

 have been continents. 



