from him.

Tuna and Daphne

To do justice to Mr. Max Muller, I will here state fully his view of the
story of Tuna, and then go on to the story of Daphne. For the sake of
accuracy, I take the liberty of borrowing the whole of his statement (i.
4-7):--

'I must dwell a little longer on this passage in order to show the real
difference between the ethnological and the philological schools of
comparative mythology.

'First of all, what has to be explained is not the growing up of a tree
from one or the other member of a god or hero, but the total change of a
human being or a heroine into a tree, and this under a certain
provocation. These two classes of plant-legends must be carefully kept
apart. Secondly, what does it help us to know that people in Mangaia
believed in the change of human beings into trees, if we do not know the
reason why? This is what we want to know; and without it the mere
juxtaposition of stories apparently similar is no more than the old trick
of explaining ignotum per ignotius. It leads us to imagine that we have
learnt something, when we really are as ignorant as before.

'If Mr. A. Lang had studied the Mangaian dialect, or consulted scholars
like the Rev. W. W. Gill--it is from his "Myths and Songs from the South
Pacific" that he quotes the story of Tuna--he would have seen that there
is no similarity whatever between the stories of Daphne and of Tuna. The
Tuna story belongs to a very well known class of aetiological
plant-stories, which are meant to explain a no longer intelligible name
of a plant, such as Snakeshead, Stiefmutterchen, &c.; it is in fact a
clear case of what I call disease of language, cured by the ordinary
nostrum of folk-etymology. I have often been in communication with the
Rev. W. W. Gill about these South Pacific myths and their true meaning.
The preface to his collection of Myths and Songs from the South Pacific
was written by me in 1876; and if Mr. A. Lang had only read the whole
chapter which treats of these Tree-Myths (p. 77 seq.), he would easily
have perceived the real character of the Tuna story, and would not have
placed it in the same class as the Daphne story; he would have found that
the white kernel of the cocoanut was, in Mangaia, called the "brains of
Tuna," a name like many more such names which after a time require an
explanation.

'Considering that "cocoanut" was used in Mangaia in the sense of head
(testa), the kernel or flesh of it migh