Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/40

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
26
MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION.

minds, in their Pagan darkness, had dreamed of no such thing. The Tongans themselves are descended from some gods who set forth on a voyage of discovery out of Bolotoo. Landing on Tonga, these adventurers were much pleased with the island, and determined to stay there; but in a few days certain of them died. They had left the deathless coasts for a world where death is native, and, as they had eaten of the food of the new realm, they would never escape the condition of mortality. This has been remarked as a wide-spread belief Persephone became enthralled to Hades after tasting the mystic pomegranate of the under-world. In Samoa Siati may not eat of the god's meat, nor Wainamoinen in Pohjola, nor Thomas the Rhymer in Fairyland. The exploring gods from Bolotoo were in the same way condemned to become mortal and people the world with mortal beings, and all about them should be méa máma, subject to decay and death.[1] It is remarkable, if correctly reported, that the secondary gods, or ghosts of nobles, cannot reappear as lizards, porpoises, and water-snakes; this is the privilege of the original gods only, and perhaps may be an assumption by them of a primitive totemistic aspect. The nearest approach to the idea of a permanent supreme deity is contained in the name of Táli y Toobo—"wait there, Toobo"—a name which conveys the notion perhaps of permanence or eternity. "He is a great chief from the top of the sky to the bottom of the earth."[2] He is invoked both in war and peace, not locally, but "for the general

  1. Mariner, ii. 115.
  2. Mariner, ii. 105.