Criticism of Tuna and Daphne

Now (1), as to Daphne, we are not invariably told that hers was a case of ‘the total change of a heroine into a tree.’  In Ovid {14} she is thus changed.  In Hyginus, on the other hand, the earth swallows her, and a tree takes her place.  All the authorities are late.  Here I cannot but reflect on the scholarly method of Mannhardt, who would have examined and criticised all the sources for the tale before trying to explain it.  However, Daphne was not mangled; a tree did not spring from her severed head or scattered limbs.  She was metamorphosed, or was buried in earth, a tree springing up from the place.

(2) I think we do know why the people of Mangaia ’believe in the change of human beings into trees.’  It is one among many examples of the savage sense of the intercommunity of all nature.  ’Antiquity made its division between man and the world in a very different sort than do the moderns.’ {15a} I illustrate this mental condition fully in M. R. R. i. 46-56. Why savages adopt the major premise, ’Human life is on a level with the life of all nature,’ philosophers explain in various ways.  Hume regards it as an extension to the universe of early man’s own consciousness of life and personality.  Dr. Tylor thinks that the opinion rests upon ‘a broad philosophy of nature.’ {15b} M. Lefebure appeals to psychical phenomena as I show later (see ’Fetishism’).  At all events, the existence of these savage metaphysics is a demonstrated fact.  I established it {15c} before invoking it as an explanation of savage belief in metamorphosis.

(3) ’The Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of aetiological plant-stories’ (aetiological:  assigning a cause for the plant, its peculiarities, its name, &c.), ’which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name of a plant, &c.’  I also say, ’these myths are nature-myths, so far as they attempt to account for a fact in nature—­namely, for the existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual.’ {16}

The reader has before him Mr. Max Muller’s view.  The white kernel of the cocoanut was locally styled ‘the brains of Tuna.’  That name required explanation.  Hence the story about the fate of Tuna.  Cocoanut was used in Mangaia in the sense of ‘head’ (testa).  So it is now in England.

See Bell’s Life, passim, as ‘The Chicken got home on the cocoanut.’

The Explanation

On the whole, either cocoanut kernels were called ‘brains of Tuna’ because ‘cocoanut’=’head,’ and a head has brains—­and, well, somehow I fail to see why brains of Tuna in particular!  Or, there being a story to the effect that the first cocoanut grew out of the head of the metamorphosed Tuna, the kernel was called his brains.  But why was the story told, and why of Tuna?  Tuna was an eel, and women may not eat eels; and Ina was the