Rangi
Rangi OceaniaThe Maori Ouranos. So close did Rangi, ‘sky’, embrace Papa, ‘earth’, that their children could not break free from the womb. At last the children, worn out by the continued darkness, consulted among themselves, and fierce Tu-matauenga said: ‘It is well, let us slay them.’ But Tane-mahuta, father of the forests and of all things that inhabit them, advised otherwise. ‘It is better to rend them apart’, he said, ‘and let the heaven stand far above us, and the earth lie under our feet. Let the sky become a stranger to us, but the earth remain close to us as our nursing mother.’
Several of the brothers vainly tried to rend apart the heavens and the earth. At last it was Tane-mahuta himself who succeeded in this titanic task. He placed his head on Papa and feet on Rangi; then he strained his back and limbs ‘with mighty effort’. Slowly but surely his parents were parted.
The storm god Tawhiri-ma-tea, however,...
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