remarkable coincidence with the description of
Tuoni's beer occurs in a curious story told on one of the Hervey
Islands, concerning a Mangaian Dante. Being apparently near death, this
man directed that, as soon as the breath was out of his body, a
cocoa-nut should be cracked, and its kernel disengaged from the shell
and placed upon his stomach under the grave-clothes. Having descended
to the Shades, he beheld Miru, the horrible hag who rules them, and
whose deformities need not now be detailed. She commanded him to draw
near. "The trembling human spirit obeyed, and sat down before Miru.
According to her unvarying practice she set for her intended victim a
bowl of food, and bade him eat it quite up. Miru, with evident anxiety,
waited to see him swallow it. As Tekanae took up the bowl, to his horror
he found it to consist of living centipedes. The quick-witted mortal now
recollected the cocoa-nut kernel at the pit of his stomach, and hidden
from Miru's view by his clothes. With one hand he held the bowl to his
lips, as if about to swallow its contents; with the other he secretly
held the cocoa-nut kernel, and ate it--the bowl concealing the nut from
Miru. It was evident to the goddess that Tekanae was actually swallowing
_something_: what else could it be but the contents of the fatal bowl?
Tekanae craftily contrived whilst eating the nourishing cocoa-nut to
allow the live centipedes to fall on the ground one or two at a time. As
the intended victim was all the time sitting on the ground it was no
difficult achievement in this way to empty the bowl completely by the
time he had finished the cocoa-nut. Miru waited in vain to see her
intended victim writhing in agony and raging with thirst. Her practice
on such occasions was to direct the tortured victim-spirit to dive in a
lake close by, to seek relief. None that dived into that water ever came
up alive; excessive anguish and quenchless thirst so distracting their
thoughts that they were invariably drowned. Miru would afterwards cook
and eat her victims at leisure. Here was a new event in her history: the
bowl of living centipedes had been disposed of, and yet Tekanae
manifested no sign of pain, no intention to leap into the cooling, but
fatal, waters. Long did Miru wait; but in vain. At last she said to her
visitor, 'Return to the upper world' (_i.e._, to life). 'Only remember
this--do not speak against me to mortals. Reveal not my ugly form and
my mode of treating my visi