Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/418

 1 1 o Myths from the Gilbert Islands.

procreated (cp. the Tree of Samoa). Lest the suggested analogy between the worm and the eel should seem over strained, I would mention that in a Marshall Island creation myth,^ two worms are said to have performed that work of enlarging the heavens, which the eel undertook in Gil- bertese story. Almost as valuable for comparative purpose is a myth from the island of Nias, which relates how from the heart of an original, formless being sprang a tree, the ancestor of mankind ; ^ and how from the eyes of the same being were fashioned the sun and moon.^ Here again is a complex of ideas which we cannot possibly mistake — the Na Atlbu-sun-moon-tree complex, presented to us in the first of my exhibits. This is not the place to push far my commentary on such facts as these ; but I cannot refrain from adding that, however far the " psychological " school of anthropologists is prepared to drive its argument of the fundamental similarity of the working of the human mind, it could not reasonably assume that such curious com- binations of ideas as Spider-stone- worm (or eel) -tree, or Elemental-tree-sun-moon, are likely to suggest themselves independently to different races. The logical explanation of these striking similarities lies, of course, in the migration of cultures.

Another account of the origin of mankind is evidently presented to us in sections 5 and 7 of my exhibit. There^ Na Arean is said to have begotten children on the woman of the south and the woman of the north. This progeny is called a breed of spirits ; nevertheless, the spirits were ancestors, whose line is traced down to the present day. The idea underlying this derivation of the human race is therefore that of procreation by the original god.

The third concept brought to our notice in the text is that of a direct act of creation. In the words of section 3^

^ Erdland, Die Marshall-Insulaner, Munster.

- Dixon, op. cit. p. 167. * Op. cit. p. 177.