Myth, Ritual and Religion, Vol. 1 (of 2)Lang, Andrew
Religion
Myth, Ritual and Religion, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Lang, Andrew
Myth; Mythology; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
"Down deep under the ground--deep, deep, under all the ground--is a
great hole. At night, when he has passed over the world, looked down on
everything and finished his work, he, the sun, goes into his hole, and
he crawls and creeps along it till he comes to his bed in the middle
part of the earth. So then he, the sun, sleeps there in his bed all
night.
"This hole is so little, and he, the sun, is so big, that he cannot
turn round in it; and so he must, when he has had all his sleep, pass
on through, and in the morning we see him come out in the east. When he,
the sun, has so come out, he begins to hunt up through the sky to catch
and eat any that he can of the stars, his children, for if he does not
so catch and eat he cannot live. He, the sun, is not all seen. The shape
of him is like a snake or a lizard. It is not his head that we can see,
but his belly, filled up with the stars that times and times he has
swallowed.
"The moon is the mother of the heavens and is the wife of the sun. She,
the moon, goes into the same hole as her husband to sleep her naps. But
always she has great fear of the sun, her husband, and when he comes
through the hole to the nobee (tent) deep in the ground to sleep, she
gets out and comes away if he be cross.
"She, the moon, has great love for her children, the stars, and is happy
to travel among them in the above; and they, her children, feel safe,
and sing and dance as she passes along. But the mother, she cannot help
that some of her children must be swallowed by the father every month.
It is ordered that way by the Pah-ah (Great Spirit), who lives above the
place of all.
"Every month that father, the sun, does swallow some of the stars, his
children, and then that mother, the moon, feels sorrow. She must mourn;
so she must put the black on her face for to mourn the dead. You see the
Piute women put black on their faces when a child is gone. But the dark
will wear away from the face of that mother, the moon, a little and a
little every day, and after a time again we see all bright the face of
her. But soon more of her children are gone, and again she must put on
her face the pitch and the black."
Here all the phenomena are accounted for, and the explanation is as
advanced as the Egyptian doctrine of the hole under the earth where the
sun goes when he passes from our view. And still the Great Spirit is
over all: Religion comes athwart Myth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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