far from the earth.

Notes.

I have come across no variants of the Tagalog story of why the sky
is curved.

Our second story, however, "Why the Sky is High," is without doubt
a Malayan tradition, as analogues from the Bagobos and the Pagan
tribes of Borneo attest. Miss Benedict (JAFL 26 : 16-17) furnishes
two Bagobo myths on "Why the Sky Went Up:"--

(a) "In the beginning the sky lay low over the earth--so low that when
the Mona wanted to pound their rice, they had to kneel down on the
ground to get a play for the arm. Then the poor woman called Tuglibung
said to the sky, 'Go up higher! Don't you see that I cannot pound my
rice well?' So the sky began to move upwards. When it had gone up
about five fathoms, the woman said again, 'Go up still more!' This
made the sun angry at the woman, and he rushed up very high."

(b) "In the beginning the sky hung so low over the earth that the
people could not stand upright, could not do their work. For this
reason the man in the sky said to the sky, 'Come up!' Then the sky
went up to its present place."

With Miss Benedict's first version, compare Hose and McDougall
(2 : 142):--

"According to an old man of the Long Kiputs of Borneo, the stars are
holes in the sky made by the roots of trees in the world above the sky
projecting through the floor of that world. At one time, he explained,
the sky was close to the earth, but one day Usai, a giant, when working
sago with a wooden mallet, accidentally struck his mallet against the
sky; since which time the sky has been far up out of the reach of man."

A different explanation of why the sky went up is current in British
North Borneo. It is embodied in the story of "The Horned Owl and the
Moon" (Evans, JRAI 43 : 433):--

"The moon is male and the Pwak (horned owl) is female.

"Long ago, when the sky was very low down, only a man's height from
the ground, the moon and the Pwak fell in love and married. At that
time there was a man whose wife was with child. The woman came down
from the house, and as the heat of the sun struck her on the stomach,
she became ill, for the sky was very low. Then the man was very angry
because his wife was ill, and he made seven blow-pipe arrows. Early
the next morning he took his blow-pipe with him and went to the place
where the sun rises, and waited. Now at that time there were seven
suns. When they rose, he shot six of them and left one remaining;
then he went home. At the time the man s