he grew; whence came he? We know not his father or his mother, for there was only he. His name was Na Arean te Moa-ni-bai (Sir Spider the First-of-things). As for him, he walked over the face of heaven, which was like hard rock that stuck to the earth. And heaven and earth were called the Darkness and the Cleaving-together.
So Na Arean walked over heaven alone: he trod it underfoot; he felt it with his hands;[1] he went north, he went south, he went east, he went west, he fetched a compass about it; he tapped it with the end of his staff; he sat upon it and knocked upon it with his fingers. Lo, it sounded hollow as he knocked, for it was not sticking there to the earth below. It stood forth as the floor of a sleeping house stands over the ground. And none lived below in the hollow place, nay, not a soul, for there was only Na Arean. So he entered beneath the rock that was heaven and stood below.
And now is Na Arean about to make men grow beneath that rock; he is about to command the Sand to lie with the Water, saying, "Be ye fertile."
They heard; they brought forth children, and these were their names: Na[2] Atību and Nei[3] Teakea.
Then Na Arean commanded Na Atību to lie with his sister Teakea. They heard; they brought forth children, and these were their names: Te Ikawai (The Eldest), Nei Marena (The Woman Between), Te Nao (The Wave), Na
- ↑ Here Na Arean is plainly presented to us as a person, in spite of his name, Sir Spider. The sudden metamorphosis from beast to human of godlike beings is a common characteristic of all theriomorphic cosmogonies. It is of interest to add that, according to certain tales of the "trickster" type, which are told of Na Arean in the Gilberts, he often assumed the forms of (a) a lizard and (b) an eel.
- ↑ Na, nan, nang are courtesy titles prefixed to names of males. Te, Ten and Teng are alternatively used.
- ↑ Nei is the female prefix; there is no alternative expression.
example of the conservatism of local myth-forms, which preserve intact many words and phrases now unknown to colloquial speech.
