The following legend was related to me by a gentleman when discoursing
upon the customs of the New Zealanders. It is their account of the
origin of their land, and illustrates the absurdities which they
believe.
"Old Morm (Query, rightly spelt) was a great fisherman, and being at one
time in want of fish-hooks, he quietly killed his two sons, and took
their jaw bones for hooks. As a requital to them for the loss of their
lives, he made the right eye of his eldest son the morning star, and the
right eye of his youngest son the evening star. One day he was sitting
on a rock fishing with one of the jawbones, when he hooked something
extraordinarily heavy,--whales were nothing to _him_. However, this
resisted all his endeavours, and at length he was obliged to resort to
other means to land this monster. He caught a dove, and tying the line
to its leg, he filled it with his spirit, and commanded it to fly
upwards. It did so, and without the least difficulty raised New Zealand!
Old Morm looked at this prodigy with wonder, but thinking it very pretty
he stepped ashore, where he saw men and fire. The first thing he did was
to burn his fingers, and then to cool them he jumped into the sea; when
the sulphur which arose from him was so great, that the Sulphur Island
was formed. After this things went on smoothly, till the New Zealanders
began to get refractory, and so offended the sun, that his majesty
refused to shine. So old Morm got up one day early and chased after the
sun, but it was not till after three days' hard hunting he managed to
catch him. A good deal of parleying then took place, and at last the sun
consented to shine for half the day only. Old Morm, to remedy this evil,
immediately made the moon, and tied it by a string to the sun, so that
when one went down it pulled the other up."
I did not hear on what authority this was given, but I dare say some of
your learned correspondents may have met with it, and will be kind
enough to give it, and say whether this fable was believed by _all_ the
tribes of New Zealand.