Modern Mythology. Lang Andrew
quotes the story of Tuna – he would have seen that there is no similarity whatever between the stories of Daphne and of Tuna. The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of ætiological plant-stories, which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name of a plant, such as Snakeshead, Stiefmütterchen, &c.; it is in fact a clear case of what I call disease of language, cured by the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology. I have often been in communication with the Rev. W. W. Gill about these South Pacific myths and their true meaning. The preface to his collection of Myths and Songs from the South Pacific was written by me in 1876; and if Mr. A. Lang had only read the whole chapter which treats of these Tree-Myths (p. 77 seq.), he would easily have perceived the real character of the Tuna story, and would not have placed it in the same class as the Daphne story; he would have found that the white kernel of the cocoanut was, in Mangaia, called the “brains of Tuna,” a name like many more such names which after a time require an explanation.
‘Considering that “cocoanut” was used in Mangaia in the sense of head (testa), the kernel or flesh of it might well be called the brain. If then the white kernel had been called Tuna’s brain, we have only to remember that in Mangaia there are two kinds of cocoanut trees, and we shall then have no difficulty in understanding why these twin cocoanut trees were said to have sprung from the two halves of Tuna’s brain, one being red in stem, branches, and fruit, whilst the other was of a deep green. In proof of these trees being derived from the head of Tuna, we are told that we have only to break the nut in order to see in the sprouting germ the two eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the lover of Ina. For a full understanding of this very complicated myth more information has been supplied by Mr. Gill. Ina means moon; Ina-mae-aitu, the heroine of our story, means Ina-who-had-a-divine (aitu) lover, and she was the daughter of Kui, the blind. Tuna means eel, and in Mangaia it was unlawful for women to eat eels, so that even now, as Mr. Gill informs me, his converts turn away from this fish with the utmost disgust. From other stories about the origin of cocoanut trees, told in the same island, it would appear that the sprouts of the cocoanut were actually called eels’ heads, while the skulls of warriors were called cocoanuts.
‘Taking all these facts together, it is not difficult to imagine how the story of Tuna’s brain grew up; and I am afraid we shall have to confess that the legend of Tuna throws but little light on the legend of Daphne or on the etymology of her name. No one would have a word to say against the general principle that much that is irrational, absurd, or barbarous in the Veda is a survival of a more primitive mythology anterior to the Veda. How could it be otherwise?’
Now (1), as to Daphne, we are not invariably told that hers was a case of ‘the total change of a heroine into a tree.’ In Ovid 18 she is thus changed. In Hyginus, on the other hand, the earth swallows her, and a tree takes her place. All the authorities are late. Here I cannot but reflect on the scholarly method of Mannhardt, who would have examined and criticised all the sources for the tale before trying to explain it. However, Daphne was not mangled; a tree did not spring from her severed head or scattered limbs. She was metamorphosed, or was buried in earth, a tree springing up from the place.
(2) I think we do know why the people of Mangaia ‘believe in the change of human beings into trees.’ It is one among many examples of the savage sense of the intercommunity of all nature. ‘Antiquity made its division between man and the world in a very different sort than do the moderns.’ 19 I illustrate this mental condition fully in M. R. R. i. 46-56. Why savages adopt the major premise, ‘Human life is on a level with the life of all nature,’ philosophers explain in various ways. Hume regards it as an extension to the universe of early man’s own consciousness of life and personality. Dr. Tylor thinks that the opinion rests upon ‘a broad philosophy of nature.’ 20 M. Lefébure appeals to psychical phenomena as I show later (see ‘Fetishism’). At all events, the existence of these savage metaphysics is a demonstrated fact. I established it 21 before invoking it as an explanation of savage belief in metamorphosis.
(3) ‘The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of ætiological plant-stories’ (ætiological: assigning a cause for the plant, its peculiarities, its name, &c.), ‘which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name of a plant, &c.’ I also say, ‘these myths are nature-myths, so far as they attempt to account for a fact in nature – namely, for the existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual.’ 22
The reader has before him Mr. Max Müller’s view. The white kernel of the cocoanut was locally styled ‘the brains of Tuna.’ That name required explanation. Hence the story about the fate of Tuna. Cocoanut was used in Mangaia in the sense of ‘head’ (testa). So it is now in England.
See Bell’s Life, passim, as ‘The Chicken got home on the cocoanut.’
On the whole, either cocoanut kernels were called ‘brains of Tuna’ because ‘cocoanut’=‘head,’ and a head has brains – and, well, somehow I fail to see why brains of Tuna in particular! Or, there being a story to the effect that the first cocoanut grew out of the head of the metamorphosed Tuna, the kernel was called his brains. But why was the story told, and why of Tuna? Tuna was an eel, and women may not eat eels; and Ina was the moon, who, a Mangaian Selene, loved no Latmian shepherd, but an eel. Seriously, I fail to understand Mr. Max Müller’s explanation. Given the problem, to explain a no longer intelligible plant-name – brains of Tuna – (applied not to a plant but to the kernel of a nut), this name is explained by saying that the moon, Ina, loved an eel, cut off his head at his desire, and buried it. Thence sprang cocoanut trees, with a fanciful likeness to a human face – face of Tuna – on the nut. But still, why Tuna? How could the moon love an eel, except on my own general principle of savage ‘levelling up’ of all life in all nature? In my opinion, the Mangaians wanted a fable to account for the resemblance of a cocoanut to the human head – a resemblance noted, as I show, in our own popular slang. The Mangaians also knew the moon, in her mythical aspect, as Ina; and Tuna, whatever his name may mean (Mr. Max Müller does not tell us), was an eel. 23 Having the necessary savage major premise in their minds, ‘All life is on a level and interchangeable,’ the Mangaians thought well to say that the head-like cocoanut sprang from the head of her lover, an eel, cut off by Ina. The myth accounts, I think, for the peculiarities of the cocoanut, rather than for the name ‘brains of Tuna;’ for we still ask, ‘Why of Tuna in particular? Why Tuna more than Rangoa, or anyone else?’
‘We shall have to confess that the legend of Tuna throws but little light on the legend of Daphne, or on the etymology of her name.’
I never hinted that the legend of Tuna threw light on the etymology of the name of Daphne. Mangaian and Greek are not allied languages. Nor did I give the Tuna story as an explanation of the Daphne story. I gave it as one in a mass of illustrations of the savage mental propensity so copiously established by Dr. Tylor in Primitive Culture. The two alternative explanations which I gave of the Daphne story I have cited. No mention of Tuna occurs in either.
The Tuna story is described as ‘a clear case of disease of language cured by the ordinary nostrum of folk-etymology.’ The ‘disease’ showed itself, I suppose, in the presence of the Mangaian words for ‘brain of Tuna.’ But the story of Tuna gives no folk-etymology of the name Tuna. Now, to give an etymology of a name of forgotten meaning is the sole object of folk-etymology. The plant-name, ‘snake’s head,’ given as an example by Mr. Max Müller, needs no etymological explanation. A story may be told to explain why the plant is called snake’s head, but a story to give an etymology of snake’s head is superfluous. The Tuna story explains why the cocoanut kernel is called ‘brains of Tuna,’ but it offers no etymology of Tuna’s name. On the other hand, the story that marmalade (really marmalet) is so called because Queen Mary found comfort in marmalade when she was sea-sick – hence Marie-malade, hence marmalade – gives an etymological explanation of the
Grimm, cited by Liebrecht in
Erratum: This is erroneous. See