[60] See p. 155 for a description of this process. [Transcriber's note: 20 pages further from this one.]
Before we proceed further with the description of the life of the people, it will be well for us to inquire into their religious beliefs, for, as is the case with all their neighbors, their faith in unseen beings influences their daily life to a very great extent. The two following tales deal with the Bila-an genesis.
"In the beginning was MElú—a being of such great size as to be beyond comparison with any known thing; who was white, having gold teeth, and who sat upon the clouds, and occupied all space above.
"He was very cleanly and was constantly rubbing himself with his hands in order that he might keep his skin quite white. The scurf or dead skin which he thus removed, he placed to one side where it accumulated at last to such a heap that it annoyed him. To be rid of this annoyance he made the earth, and being pleased with his work, he decided to make two beings like himself only much smaller in size. This he did from remnants of the material from which he made the earth.
"Now, while MElú was making the first two men, and when he had the first one finished, all excepting the nose; and the second one finished all excepting the nose and one other part, Tau Tana (Funtana) or Tau Dalom Tana appeared and demanded of MElú that he be allowed to make the nose. Then began a great argument in which Tau Dalom Tana gained his point and did make the noses and placed them on the faces of the first two people upside down. So great had been the argument over this making and placing of noses that MElú forgot to finish that part of the second person and went away to his place above the clouds, and Tau Dalom Tana went away to his place below the earth. Then came a great rain and the two people on the earth were about to perish on account of the water which ran off their heads into their noses. MElú seeing what was happening came to them and changed their noses, and then told them that they should save all the hair which came from their heads, and all the scurf which came from their bodies to the end that when he came again he might make more people. As time passed there came to be a great many people, and they lived in a village having plenty to eat and no labor but the gathering of such fruits as they desired.
"One day when the rest of the people were about the village and the near country, a man and woman who had been left behind fell to gazing, one upon the person of the other, and after a little while they went away apart from the rest and were gone many days, and when they returned the woman carried a child in her arms, and the people wondered and were afraid. When MElú came again soon, knowing what had taken place, he was very angry and he went away abandoning them, and a great drought came, when for two seasons no rain fell and everything withered up and died. At last the people went away, two by two, one man and one woman together, and MElú never again came to visit his people on earth."[61]
[61] Recorded by Mr. H. S. Wilson.