presence and the old woman knew that he was a
descendant of hers, and her stomach began immediately to shrink and
contract itself again.

Then she asked, "Art thou Maui?"

He answered, "Even so," and told her that he wanted "the jaw-bone by
which great enchantments could be wrought."

Then Muri, the old chiefess, gave him the magic bone and he returned to
his brothers, who were still living on the earth.

Then Maui said: "Let us now catch the sun in a noose that we may compel
him to move more slowly in order that mankind may have long days to
labor in and procure subsistence for themselves."

They replied, "No man can approach it on account of the fierceness of
the heat."

According to the Society Island legend, his mother advised him to have
nothing to do with the sun, who was a divine living creature, "in form
like a man, possessed of fearful energy," shaking his golden locks both
morning and evening in the eyes of men. Many persons had tried to
regulate the movements of the sun, but had failed completely.

But Maui encouraged his mother and his brothers by asking them to
remember his power to protect himself by the use of enchantments.

The Hawaiian legend says that Maui himself gathered cocoanut fibre in
great quantity and manufactured it into strong ropes. But the legends of
other islands say that he had the aid of his brothers, and while working
learned many useful lessons. While winding and twisting they discovered
how to make square ropes and flat ropes as well as the ordinary round
rope. In the Society Islands, it is said, Maui and his brothers made six
strong ropes of great length. These he called aeiariki (royal nooses).

The New Zealand legend says that when Maui and his brothers had finished
making all the ropes required they took provisions and other things
needed and journeyed toward the east to find the place where the sun
should rise. Maui carried with him the magic jaw-bone which he had
secured from Muri, his ancestress, in the under-world.

They traveled all night and concealed themselves by day so that the sun
should not see them and become too suspicious and watchful. In this way
they journeyed, until "at length they had gone very far to the eastward
and had come to the very edge of the place out of which the sun rises.
There they set to work and built on each side a long, high wall of clay,
with huts of boughs of trees at each end to hide themselves in."

Here they laid a large noose m