Maui is the Polynesian god of the ancient days. He concluded, as did Ta-wats, that the days were too short. He wanted the sun to slow-up, but it would not. So he proceeded to catch it in a noose like the Ojibway boy and the Wyandot youth. The manufacture of the noose, we are told, led to the discovery of the art of rope-making. He took his brothers with him; he armed himself, like Samson, with a jaw-bone, but instead of the jaw-bone of an ass, he, with much better taste, selected the jawbone of his mistress. She may have been a lady of fine conversational powers. They traveled far, like Ta-wats, even to the very edge of the place where the sun rises. There he set his noose. The sun came and put his head and fore-paws into it; then the brothers pulled the ropes
[1. Richardson's "Narrative of Franklin's Second Expedition," p. 291.]
{p. 184}
tight and Maui gave him a great whipping with the jawbone; he screamed and roared; they held him there for a long time, (the Age of Darkness,) and at last they let him go; and weak from his wounds, (obscured by clouds,) he crawls slowly along his path. Here the jaw of the wolf Fenris, which reached from earth to heaven, in the Scandinavian legends, becomes a veritable jaw-bone which beats and ruins the sun.
It is a curious fact that the sun in this Polynesian legend is Ra, precisely the same as the name of the god of the sun in Egypt, while in Hindostan the sun-god is Ra-ma.
In another Polynesian legend we read of a character who was satisfied with nothing, "even pudding would not content him," and this unconscionable fellow worried his family out of all heart with his new ways and ideas. He represents a progressive, inventive race. He was building a great house, but the days were too short; so, like Maui, he determined to catch the sun in nets and ropes; but the sun went on. At last he succeeded; he caught him. The good man then had time to finish his house, but the sun cried and cried "until the island of Savai was nearly drowned."[1]
And these myths of the sun being tied by a cord are, strange to say, found even in Europe. The legends tell us:
"In North Germany the townsmen of Bösum sit up in their church-tower and hold the sun by a cable all day long; taking care of it at night, and letting it up again in the morning. In 'Reynard the Fox,' the day is bound with a rope, and its bonds only allow it to come slowly on. The Peruvian Inca said the sun is like a tied beast, who goes ever round and round, in the same track."[2]
That is to say, they recognized that he is not a god, but the servant of God.
[1. Tyler's "Early Mankind," p. 347.