of different peoples, which could not have been invented without an adequate knowledge of the laws of motion and thermodynamics. It is inconceivable that the ancients or the primitive races would, for instance, by sheer chance invent the tale that a huge conflagration enveloped the American prairies and forests as soon as the sun, frightened off by the snarer, returned a little on its way.
If a phenomenon had been similarly described by many peoples, we might suspect that a tale, originating with one people, had spread around the world, and consequently there is no proof of the authenticity of the event related. But just because one and the same event is embodied in traditions that are very different indeed, its authenticity becomes highly probable, especially if the records of history, ancient charts, sundials, and the physical evidence of natural history testify to the same effect.
In the Section "Venus in the Folklore of the Indians" a few illustrations were offered to illuminate this thesis. In order to illustrate it with additional examples, we choose the nature-folkloristic motif of the sun being arrested in its movement across the firmament in the tales of the Polynesians, Hawaiians, and North American Indians.
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The best known legend cycle on the Pacific islands is that which has for its hero the semigod Maui.1 This cycle comprises a trilogy: "Of the many exploits of Maui three seem to be most widely spread: they are fishing up of the land, snaring the sun and the quest of fire."2 There are two versions of this cycle, one in New Zealand and one in Hawaii, but both are variants of a common tradition.
The Hawaiian version of the snaring of the sun runs thus: "Maui's mother was much troubled by the shortness of the day, occasioned by the rapid movement of the sun; and since it was impossible to dry properly the sheets of tapa used for clothing, the hero resolved to cut off the legs of the sun, so that he could not travel fast.
"Maui now went off eastward to where the sun climbed daily out of
1 "Of all the myths from the Polynesian area, probably none have been more frequently quoted than those which recount the deeds and adventures of the semi-god Maui. The Maui cycle is one of the most important for the study of this whole area." Dixon, Oceanic Mythology, p. 41.
2 Ibid., p. 42.
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the underworld, and as the luminary came up, the hero noosed his legs, one after the other, and tied the ropes strongly to great trees. Fairly caught, the sun could not get away, and Maui gave him a tremendous beating with his magic weapon. To save his life, the sun begged for mercy, and on promising to go more slowly ever after, was released from his bonds."
The "fishing up of islands" or the appearance of new islands took place at the same time; the causal relation to the cosmic change in the sky is evident. In one of the versions told in Polynesia about the fishing up of the islands, it is said that a star was used as bait.
The following is a tale told by the Menomini Indians, an Algonquin tribe.3 "The little boy made a noose and stretched it across the path, and when the Sun came to that point the noose caught him around the neck and began to choke him until he almost lost his breath. It became dark, and the Sun called out to the ma'nidos, 'Help me, my brothers, and cut this string before it kills me.'4
The ma'nidos came, but the thread had so cut into the flesh of the Sun's neck that they could not sever it. When all but one had given up, the Sun called to the Mouse to try to cut the string. The Mouse came up and gnawed at the string, but it was difficult work, because the string was hot and deeply imbedded in the Sun's neck. After working at the string a good while, however, the Mouse succeeded in cutting it, when the Sun breathed again and the darkness disappeared. If the Mouse had not succeeded, the Sun would have died."
The story about snaring the sun associates itself in our mind with one of the occasions when the sun was disrupted in its movement across the sky. The story contains an important detail and enables us to understand a natural phenomenon.
In a previous section we discussed the various versions of the annihilation of Sennacherib's army and the physical phenomena which caused it. According to the Scriptures, in the days of Isaiah the sun was interrupted in its course, turning back ten degrees on the
3 Hoffman, Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, XIV, 181, reproduced by S.
Thompson, Tales of the North American Indians (1929).
4 Ma'nido is "a spirit or spiritual being; any person or subject endowed with spiritual power."
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sundial. That night the army of Sennacherib was destroyed by a blast. In Egypt this victory over the common enemy of the Jews and the Egyptians was observed in a festival at Letopolis, "the city of the thunderbolt"; the holy animal of the city was a mouse, and bronze mice inscribed with the prayers of pilgrims are found in its soil. Herodotus saw there a statue of a god with a mouse in his hand, commemorating the annihilation of the army of Sennacherib. The story he heard gave as the cause of the event an invasion of mice that gnawed the strings of the bows. He also told the story of the changed movements of the sun directly following the record of the destruction of the Assyrian army. We recognized that the image of the mouse must have had some relation to the cosmic drama. The best we could do was to interpret the mouse as a symbol of a simultaneous plague, exemplified by the illness of King Hezekiah.
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The tale of the Indians that combines the snaring of the sun with the deed of the mouse explains the relation of these two elements to each other. Apparently the atmosphere of the celestial body that appeared in the darkness and was illuminated took on the elongated form of a mouse. This explains why the blast that destroyed the army of Sennacherib was commemorated by the emblem of a mouse. The Indian tale grew from the picture on the celestial screen where a great mouse freed the snared sun.
Thus we see how a folk story of the primitives can solve an unsettled problem between Isaiah and Herodotus.
A four-legged animal in the sky approaching the sun was visualized as a mouse by the Egyptians and the Menomini Indians. In the tale of the southern Ute Indians, the cottontail is the animal that is connected with the disruption of the movement of the sun.5 He went to the east with the intention of breaking the sun in pieces. There he waited for the sun to rise. "The sun began to rise, but seeing the cottontail, it went down again. Then it rose slowly again and did not notice the animal. He struck the sun with his club, breaking off a piece, which touched the ground and set fire to the world.
5R. H. Lowie, "Shoshonean Tales," Journal of American Folk-lore, XXXVII (1924), 61 ff.
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"The fire pursued Cottontail, who began to flee. He ran to a log and asked if it would save him if he got inside. 'No, I burn up entirely.' So he ran again and asked a rock with a cleft in it. 'No, I cannot save you, when I am heated I burst. ..." At last he got to a river. The river said, 'No, I cannot save you; I'll boil and you will get boiled.'"
On the plain, Cottontail ran through the weed, but the fire came very close, the weed burned and fell on his neck, "where cottontails are yellow now."
"From everywhere he saw smoke rising. He walked a little way on the hot ground and one of his legs was burned up to the knee; before that he had been long-legged. He walked on two legs, and one of them burned off. He jumped on one till that also burned off."
In this version of the attack on the sun, two points worthy of mention are the world fire following the disruption in the movement of the sun, and the change in the world of animals accompanied by strong mutations. In the section, "Phaethon," we wondered how the Roman poet Ovid could have known of the relation between the interrupted movement of the sun and a world fire unless such a catastrophe had really occurred. The same reasoning applies to the Indians. The story of snaring the sun or attacking the sun is told in many variants, but the world fire is a consistent result. Forests and fields burn, mountains smoke and vomit lava, rivers boil, caves in the mountains collapse, and rocks burst when the sun peeps above the horizon and then disappears and again comes over the horizon.