The tides are caused by a great fish in mid-ocean, alternately drinking and vomiting up the water. While he drinks the tide ebbs, even till all the flats and reefs are dry, at which crisis the converse operation begins. The fish ejects from his mouth all the water that has passed through it. The tide is now turned, the reefs gradually become covered, the rivers rise, it is high tide; or, as our ecclesiastical friend put it, “the lagoons on the giant’s back are full of water, and the fishermen may sail up and down here in their double canoes.” Thus for ever does this wonderful fish keep at the post of duty.
In respect of tides there is a belief among the natives that the wood-pigeon is never heard cooing at either high or low tide; nor is any human being ever known to die, but at one or the other of those times. In cases of sickness where the patient is sinking, and all hope of recovery has died out in the hearts of watching friends, it is quite common to hear the announcement that “the spirit will depart at the next low tide;” that passed and the person still alive, “he will not die till the high tide.” And so on, a crisis happening at each change of tide, until death closes the scene or hope revives.
Some of the fables of cannibal-land are not mere useless compositions without point or moral in them, but often teach, in their rough and inelegant way, valuable lessons. The following from the lips of Centipede, who, on this particular night, had the monopoly of this part of the conversational entertainment, teaches practical benevolence as clearly and forcibly as our own “Love me—love my dog.”
“Our teeth will be covered with blood to-day,” said a lean and hungry dog in a tete-à-tete with an equally gaunt and hungry cat. “Why?” asked puss, probably thinking there was a prospect of a good meal of flesh. “Because,” said her canine friend, “although there is plenty of fish, those long posts will be sure to eat it all up, leaving you and me nothing but the bones.” The long posts are the human masters and mistresses, who on hearing this fable ought never again to treat their dogs or servants as though they never had any appetite, or enjoyed only the leavings of others.
“I’ll stay and take care of the foundation,” said the snake who would gladly have escaped from the burning house, but could not because the flames were too fast for him. This is our “fox and the grapes” over again, but with this important difference, that the snake was burnt, whereas the fox had only to walk off without the grapes.
In the following we come upon resurrection gleams:—“The Moon and the Rat talked together of death. ‘Let us all die like me,’ said the Rat, ‘run our course, die therein, and have done with it.’ ‘Nay,’ answered the Moon, ‘let us all die like me—run our course, and die in it, but after a little while appear again!’” Unhappily the rat’s proposal was adopted. In this fable the cannibal notion as to a resurrection is briefly dealt with and dismissed. There is, indeed, little or nothing in any of the mythologies pointing to a belief in a bodily resurrection.
Here we have a fable which points at the numerous class of persons who would have us “do as they tell us—not as they do.”
“The great and little fish once called a monster meeting to consider the best thing to be done to escape or get rid of the new danger which had lately made its appearance below water, and snatched away so many of their friends and kinsfolk. The new danger complained of was a baited fish-hook[[7]] which a fish of another sort was always letting down from above. After many large and small fry had told their minds, one Rakasalah, who must have been a very important fish in his own eyes if no where else, darted forward and delivered himself thus:—‘Fellow fishes! let me tell you a bit of my mind. When the hook comes down be sure you never bite it; swim wide of it, and your lives will never be snatched away!’ The words were hardly out of his mouth when down came a bait, which Rakasalah darted at with the swiftness of lightning, and, without even the slightest precautionary nibble, bolted hook and all. Of course he was hooked up into another world—one much less conducive to his health than that in which he delivered his last oration. The last thing he ever heard from his own land was, not the deafening applause of his fellow-fishes, which would have charmed his ear had he been consistent, but their angry scoffing shout—‘Behold the fish that told us not to bite the bait, and was the first to swallow it all himself!’” From this fable is derived the proverb “He preaches like Rakasalah, the fish.”
[7]. Made of tortoise shell.
As I listened to the following tale given with some others of a similar character by Flag, the King’s herald, I thought involuntarily of the “Green Isle,” and the “Blessed St. Patrick.” There are neither parrots nor pine trees on the island of Ono. This Ono was once the abode of a powerful hero who was great in arms and in jealousy. One day a parrot, in a pine tree near his house, kept up a continual chatter, chattering away as only parrots can. The jealous god, influenced by but one idea, and that as “cruel as the grave,” rashly concluded the voice to be that of some hero like himself, come perhaps from another island to pay his addresses to the lady whose heart was already bestowed on him. This thought overpowered him and forced him to an act of folly. Dashing furiously at the pine tree he tore off one of its branches, and chased therewith the beautiful bird, shouting as he drove him from the shores of the island, “Begone! flee! avaunt! and never show your colours again this side of the water!” Since that fatal day the soil and air of Ono have been unfriendly alike to pine trees and parrots. No sooner are they landed there than they die.