Stirring scenes in savage lands : $b An account of the manners, customs, habits and recreations, peaceful and warlike, of the uncivilised worldGreenwood, James
History
Stirring scenes in savage lands : $b An account of the manners, customs, habits and recreations, peaceful and warlike, of the uncivilised world
Greenwood, James
Anthropology
“In another story we are told, that the man came down one evening and
picked up a woman, called Sina, and her child. It was during a time
of famine. She was working in the evening twilight, beating out some
bark with which to make native cloth. The moon was just rising, and
it reminded her of great bread-fruit. Looking up to it she said, ‘Why
cannot you come down and let my child have a bit of you?’ The moon was
indignant at the idea of being eaten, came forthwith, and took up her
child, board, mallet, and all. The popular superstition of ‘the man in
the moon, who gathered sticks on the Sabbath-day,’ is not yet forgotten
in England, and in Samoa, of the woman in the moon. ‘Yonder is Sina,’
they say, ‘and her child, and mallet and board.’
“We have a fragment or two, also, about the sun. A woman called
Manquamanqui became pregnant by looking at the rising sun. Her son
grew, and was named ‘Child of the Sun.’ At his marriage he asked his
mother for a dowry. She sent him to his father the Sun, to beg from
him, and told him how to go. Following her directions, he went one
morning, with a long vine from the bush, which is the convenient
substitute for a rope, climbed a tree, threw his rope, with a noose
at the end of it, and caught the Sun. He made his message known and
(Pandora like) got a present for his bride. The Sun first asked him
what was his choice, blessings or calamities? He chose, of course,
the former, and came down with his store of blessings done up in a
basket. There is another tale about this Samoan Phaeton, similar to
what is related of the Hawaiian Mani. They say that he and his mother
were annoyed at the rapidity of the sun’s course in those days--that
it rose, reached the meridian, and set ‘before they could get their
mats dried.’ He determined to make it go slower. He climbed a tree
one morning early, and with a rope and noose all ready, watched for
the appearance of the sun. Just as it emerged from the horizon, he
threw, and caught it; the sun struggled to get clear, but in vain. Then
fearing lest it should be strangled, it called out in distress, ‘Oh!
have mercy on me, and spare my life. What do you want?’ ‘We wish you
to go slower, we can get no work done.’ ‘Very well,’ replied the Sun;
‘let me go, and for the future I will walk slowly, and never go quick
again.’ He let go the rope, and ever since the sun has gone slowly,
and given us longer days. Ludicrous and puerile as this is, one cannot
help seeing in it the wreck of that sublime description in the book of
Joshua, of the day when that man of God stood in the sight of Israel,
and said: ‘Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the
valley of Ajalon. And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stayed until
the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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