Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/408

100 ranges itself definitely within the category of the heterodox Nui rendering, and may be used as clinching evidence.

It tells how the god Au-ria-ria, with his companions, was of great stature and fair skin, while Tabakea and Na Arean were small, black, stinking, and flat-nosed, with furry hair and huge ears; and how Au-ria-ria overturned Banaba and buried Tabakea beneath it. There he lies to this day, supporting Banaba on his back.

This is again quite evidently the account of a strife between two distinct races. The very divergence between the details of this version and of that from Nui is proof that we are dealing with actual fact. Had the two renderings agreed precisely in their presentation of the story, we might have suspected that they were a myth-inheritance passed down to Nui and Banaban people alike from some common and untraceable source. But that Tarawa in the one tale and Banaba in the other are the centres of action; that this version tells of sea and land-folk, while that speaks of dark and fair; and that each has its peculiar methods of indicating the conflict, are psychological points of which we cannot evade the meaning. They show us that these two tales are highly individualised accounts of events actually experienced, being independent records of the same local conflict as remembered by divergent branches of the race. If now we read the versions together, arranging the conjoined evidence in a composite whole, we get a clear digest of some exceedingly important historic events in Micronesia: