Samoa, where we find our story, is the name of a group of volcanic islands in Central Polynesia.  They are about 3,000 miles from Sidney, 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, and began to set Siati upon perilous tasks:  ’Build me a house, and let it be finished this very day, else death and the oven await thee.’ {99a}

Siati wept, but the god’s daughter had the house built by the evening.  The other adventures were to fight a fierce dog, and to find a ring lost at sea.  Just as the Scotch giant’s daughter cut off her fingers to help her lover, so the Samoan god’s daughter bade Siati cut her body into pieces and cast her into the sea.  There she became a fish, and recovered the ring.  They set off to the god’s house, but met him pursuing them, with the help of his other daughter.  ’Puapae and Siati threw down the comb, and it became a bush of thorns in the way to intercept the god and Puanli,’ the other daughter.  Next they threw down a bottle of earth which became a mountain; ’and then followed their bottle of water, and that became a sea, and drowned the god and Puanli.’ {99b}

This old Samoan song contains nearly the closest savage parallel to the various household tales which find their heroic and artistic shape in the Jason saga.  Still more surprising in its resemblances is the Malagasy version of the narrative.  In the Malagasy story, the conclusion is almost identical with the winding up of the Scotch fairy tale.  The girl hides in a tree; her face, seen reflected in a well, is mistaken by women for their own faces, and the recognition follows in due course. {99c}