Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/414

106 fusion of an evolutionary with a creative theme, for it shows us Na Arean, an original and creative being, enthroned above a chaotic darkness and cleaving-together of the elements, which are plainly survivals from an evolutionary hypothesis. I know of no other Oceanic folk that has retained a hybrid myth in a form at once so homogeneous and yet so precise in its lines of cleavage. This particular version seems to be an example of perfect compromise between two conflicting systems, in which the sacrifice of characteristic elements appears to have been equal on either side, neither form having suffered so greatly but it can be easily recognised. In other renderings of the same myth we are able to see how on one hand the creative idea was retained at the expense of the evolutionary, and how on the other hand the latter sometimes triumphed over the former.

From the island of Maiana in the Northern Gilberts comes a story of Na Arean the First-of-things, which goes about as near the idea of an absolute creator as it is possible to get without becoming metaphysical. Na Arean is pictured as a being who sat alone in space as "a cloud that floats in nothingness." He slept not, for there was no sleep; he hungered not, for as yet there was no hunger. So he remained for a great while, until a thought came into his mind. He said to himself, "I will make a thing." So he made water in his left hand, and dabbled it with his right until it was muddy; then he rolled the mud flat and sat upon it. As he sat, a great swelling grew in his forehead, until on the third day it burst, and a little man sprang forth. "Thou art my thought," said Na Arean; "Thou art the picture of my thought (taamnei-n an iango, ngkoe). Thy name is Na Arean the Younger. Sit thou in my right eye or in my left eye, as thou wilt." So the little man sat sometimes in his father's right eye and sometimes in his left, and for a great while it was so. At last Na Arean the First-of-things called aloud, "Na Arean!" His son