English readers from its introduction into the poem of Hiawatha. In another version, the tale is told of the Little Monedo of the Ojibwas, who also corresponds with the New Zealand Maui in being the Sun-Catcher; among his various prodigies, he is swallowed by the great fish, and cut out again by his sister.[1] South Africa is a region where there prevail myths which seem to tell the story of the world imprisoned in the monster Night, and delivered by the dawning Sun. The Basutos have their myth of the hero Litaolane; he came to man's stature and wisdom at his birth; all mankind save his mother and he had been devoured by a monster; he attacked the creature and was swallowed whole, but cutting his way out he set free all the inhabitants of the world. The Zulus tell stories as pointedly suggestive. A mother follows her children into the maw of the great elephant, and finds forests and rivers and highlands, and dogs and cattle, and people who had built their villages there; a description which is simply that of the Zulu Hades. When the Princess Untombinde was carried off by the Isikqukqumadevu, the 'bloated, squatting, bearded monster,' the King gathered his army and attacked it, but it swallowed up men, and dogs, and cattle, all but one warrior; he slew the monster, and there came out cattle, and horses, and men, and last of all the princess herself. The stories of these monsters being cut open imitate, in graphic savage fashion, the cries of the imprisoned creatures as they came back from darkness into daylight. 'There came out first a fowl, it said, "Kukuluku! I see the world!" For, for a long time it had been without seeing it. After the fowl there came out a man, he said "Hau! I at length see the world!"' and so on with the rest.[2]
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iii. p. 318; 'Algic Res.' vol. i. p. 135, &c., 144; John Tanner, 'Narrative,' p. 357; see Brinton, 'Myths of New World,' p. 166. For legends of Sun-Catcher, see 'Early Hist. of Mankind,' ch. xii.
- ↑ Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 347; Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. pp. 56, 69, 84, 334 (see also the story, p. 241, of the frog who swallowed the princess and carried her safe home). See Cranz, p. 271 (Greenland angekok swallowed by
