ng, and so appears as Medeia
("the Wise").'

We must suppose, it seems, that either the soft spring rains and the
moon, or the dawn and the sun, or the lightning and the thunder-cloud,
in one arrangement or another, irresistibly suggested, to early Aryan
minds, the picture of a wooer, arriving in a hostile home, winning a
maiden's love, achieving adventures by her aid, fleeing with her from
her angry father and delaying his pursuit by various devices. Why the
spring, the moon, the lightning, the dawn--any of them or all of
them--should have suggested such a tale, let Scholars determine when
they have reconciled their own differences. It is more to our purpose
to follow the myth among Samoans, Algonquins, and Finns. None of these
races speak an Aryan language, and none can have been beguiled into
telling the same sort of tale by a disease of Aryan speech.

Samoa, where we find our story, is the name of a group of volcanic
islands in Central Polynesia. They are about 3000 miles from Sydney,
were first observed by Europeans in 1722, and are as far removed as
most spots from direct Aryan influences. Our position is, however,
that in the shiftings and migrations of peoples, the Jason tale has
somehow been swept, like a piece of drift-wood, on to the coasts of
Samoa. In the islands, the tale has an epical form, and is chanted in
a poem of twenty-six stanzas. There is something Greek, in the free
and happy life of the Samoans--something Greek, too, in this myth of
theirs. There was once a youth, Siati, famous for his singing, a young
Thamyris of Samoa. But as, according to Homer, 'the Muses met Thamyris
the Thracian, and made an end of his singing, for he boasted and said
that he would vanquish even the Muses if he sang against them,' so did
the Samoan god of song envy Siati. The god and the mortal sang a
match: the daughter of the god was to be the mortal's prize if he
proved victorious. Siati won, and he set off, riding on a shark, as
Arion rode the dolphin, to seek the home of the defeated deity. At
length he reached the shores divine, and thither strayed Puapae,
daughter of the god, looking for her comb which she had lost. 'Siati,'
said she, 'how camest thou hither?' 'I am come to seek the song-god,
and to wed his daughter.' 'My father,' said the maiden, 'is more a god
than a man; eat nothing he hands you, never sit on a high seat, lest
death follow.' So they were united in marriage. But the god, like
AEetes, was wroth,