Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/416

108 over the creative. From Tabitenea (Central Gilberts) comes the following:

At this point the myth assumes narrative form, and tells how Na Arean the second raised land from the sea. But of course it does not show the god as the separator of heaven and earth, because the sundering of the elements is curiously assumed to have taken place genealogically. From the Sundering in the Void sprang the elder Na Arean. Thus, the triumph of the evolutionary theme has cost the one his title of original being, and the other his prestige as the supreme lord of creation; while for all that we may discern of Na Arean's claim to be a light god in this text, it may as well have been swallowed up in the black darkness of the evolutionary hypothesis.

I propose to allocate this section to fugitive notes on points of interest in my first exhibit.

If anyone be unconvinced of the stratification of Gilbertese myth, let him observe in the text those conflicting