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

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

"In the beginning was Darkness and therein was a Cleaving-together of earth and heaven; no man dwelt therein.

But the Darkness lay with the Cleaving-together; their child was the Land (te Aba).

The Land lay with the Sky (Karawa); their child was the Void (Te Akea).

The Void lay with the Sundering (te Rawe); their child was Na Arean.

Na Arean lay with the Rock (te Bā); their child was the Night (te Bong).

The Night lay with the Daylight (te Ngaina); their child was the Lightning (te Iti).

The Lightning lay. with the Thunder (te Bă); their child was Na Arean.

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.

IV.

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