re thereby
enabled to stand erect and to walk about without
inconvenience. Hence Ru was named 'The sky-supporter.'
Wherefore Teka sings (1794):

'Force up the sky, O Ru,
And let the space be clear!'

"One day when the old man was surveying his work, his
graceless son Maui contemptuously asked him what he was doing
there. Ru replied: 'Who told youngsters to talk? Take care of
yourself, or I will hurl you out of existence.'

"'Do it, then,' shouted Maui.

"Ru was as good as his word, and forthwith seized Maui, who
was small of stature, and threw him to a great height. In
falling Maui assumed the form of a bird, and lightly touched
the ground, perfectly unharmed. Maui, now thirsting for
revenge, in a moment resumed his natural form, but
exaggerated to gigantic proportions, and ran to his father,
saying:

'Ru, who supportest the many heavens,
The third, even to the highest, ascend!'

"Inserting his head between the old man's legs, he exerted all
his prodigious strength, and hurled poor Ru, sky and all, to
a tremendous height--so high, indeed, that the blue sky could
never get back again. Unluckily, however, for the
sky-supporting Ru, his head and shoulders got entangled among
the stars. He struggled hard, but fruitlessly, to extricate
himself. Maui walked off well pleased with having raised the
sky to its present height, but left half his father's body
and both his legs ingloriously suspended between heaven and
earth. Thus perished Ru. His body rotted away, and his bones
came tumbling down from time to time, and were shivered on
the earth into countless fragments. These shivered bones of
Ru are scattered over every hill and valley of Mangaia, to
the very edge of the sea."

What the natives call "the bones of Ru" (t e i v i o R u) are pieces of
pumice-stone.

Now let us consider, first of all, whether this story, which with
slight variations is told all over the Polynesian islands,[164] is
pure nonsense, or whether there was originally some sense in it. My
conviction is that nonsense is everywhere the child of sense, only
that unfortunately many children, like that youngster Maui, consider
themselves much wiser than their fathers, and occasionally succeed in
hurling them out of existence.

It is a peculiarity of many of the ancient myths that they represent
even