Episode 88 – You’re Welcome – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 88 Show Notes

Source: Polynesian Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’re going to catch up with one of the all-time great tricksters. You’ll see that fire likes to hide, that you can’t trust birds, and that toenails are valuable. Then, in Gods and Monsters, it’s a tragic tale of jealousy, revenge, and…fluffy critters? This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 88, “You’re Welcome”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
We haven’t visited with our old pal Maui since way, way back in Episode 19, so it’s high time we brought him back. He’s one of my favorite trickster gods, so it’s time for a tale about Maui pulling one of the classic trickster moves – stealing fire. As with many of our stories, there are multiple versions of this one that fall into three broad camps. Buckle in folks, cause here we go.
So at the time our first tale begins, Maui has already been pretty well established as a useful troublemaker in Hawaii. Maui’s mother (Hina in this version) wanted a nice fish dinner. The next morning, Maui looked out and saw that the great storm waves had died down, leaving the sea relatively calm and the best fishing grounds reachable. He woke his brothers and together they hurried to the beach. They paddled out far from the shore, confident in the calm seas and began to fish. It was fairly boring work, and Maui looked around for something interesting. On the side of the mountain far away on the shore, he saw it – fire. He slapped his nearest brother to get his attention. “Check it out, bro – there’s a fire burning on the mountain! I wonder who it belongs to.”
Maui’s brothers ignored the slap, equally intrigued by the distant fire. They talked amongst themselves, but none had any idea whose fire it could be. Flames were rare and precious, ever since the volcano Mount Haleakala had gone extinct. They had gathered as many coals as they could find, but keeping them alive was difficult. They all knew that fire could be used to cook food and make it much, much more delicious and longed for a meal that wasn’t hard roots and raw fish. After discussing it, they resolved to hurry to the shore to cook their newly-caught fish on the mountain. Of course, they first needed to actually catch the fish that they wanted to cook, which meant fishing all morning before the heat of the day drove the fish down too deep.
Sometime after noon, they beached the ship and Maui raced up the side of the mountain towards the pillar of smoke up above. As he neared, he saw a family of birds scratching sand over the fire, snuffing it out. They finished their work and flew away just as Maui reached the spot, panting and exhausted from his race. Maui was pissed that he had just missed his chance and, returning to his brothers, they decided to hide and wait for the birds to build a new fire that they could sneak up and take. This ploy had worked well enough against the sun, so surely it could fool a few birds, right?
Unfortunately, the curly-tailed alae (a type of mudhen) seemed to sense the presence of the brothers and stayed out of sight. They waited in hiding for days, but the alae made no fire. They grew bored and frustrated of this losing game and eventually gave it up as a raw deal. Cursing quietly under their breath, they paddled out to sea again to do some more fishing. No sooner had they reached their fishing spot over the deep ocean than smoke began to rise up from the side of the mountain. Rowing with all their might, the brothers raced back to shore and ran up the mountain slope but again the fire was put out before they could arrive. They repeated this exercise with increasing frustration two or three times, but the alae were always just a few minutes too fast.
“Those birds are too fucking clever by half, but I’ll outwit them or my name isn’t Maui! They’re clearly waiting until we leave to build their fire so here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to hide myself here on the island and you all are going to row back out to the fishing spot. Those selfish assholes will see the boat leaving and build a fire, and I’ll be close enough to get there before they can put it out.” Everyone agreed that this was a clever plan and hurried to carry it out. Maui found a nice secluded spot and waited as his brothers went fishing.
And he waited. And waited. And waited. With growing anger, Maui realized that once again, those fucking birds had outsmarted him. The alae had seen the canoe heading out for open water as the brothers had hoped, but it turned out that the bird brains could count. They saw that there were only three men in the boat and figured that the fourth was probably lying in wait. Maui and his brothers experimented with different configurations, but it made no difference. Unless all four of them were in the boat, the mudhens would not build a fire.
Maui racked his brain to figure out some clever trick to outwit these damned birds. His reputation was on the line now in addition to tasty cooked food. He looked around the island for inspiration and his eye fell on a bolt of kapa cloth. Maui grinned. He had a great idea.
The next day, the boat sped out away from the island and the alae birds counted the figures in it as it rowed away – there were four distinct human figures on it. Rustling their feathers smugly, the bird family began to pile up wood for a fire. Maui was waiting for them. He had built a dummy out of sticks and the kapa cloth and set it in his place on the boat. From a distance, it looked enough like him to fool the birds and now he was in place to surprise them and finally get his fire.
Unfortunately, Maui was impatient and impulsive. He managed to hold himself in hiding long enough for the birds to finally decide they were safe and begin selecting sticks, but they were taking so long that he leapt out of hiding and seized the oldest alae as she was selecting the best sticks for kindling. “I finally got you, asshole! How dare you hide the secret of making fire from the rest of us! Don’t you selfish fucksticks think the rest of us want hot food as well?” He got so carried away with his righteous anger (and his wounded pride at having to work so hard to best some damned birds) that he forgot all about actually getting the secret of fire and began to slowly twist her neck, intent on killing her for her selfishness.
“Aaack! If you kill me, the secret of making fire dies with me! If you ever want hot food again, let me live!” Maui paused. Dammit, the bird had a point. “Fine. You win. Tell me how to make fire, and I’ll let you live.” Ruffling her feather in Maui’s still-tight grasp, she told him he needed to rub the stalks of two water plants together. Tucking her firmly under his arm, Maui did so. He was unsurprised but definitely peeved when, instead of fire, water gushed out of the plants. He squeezed her threateningly. “Sorry, I misspoke! I meant reeds, not water plants. I’m just a silly bird – my vocabulary isn’t the best.” Maui already hadn’t trusted her to play this straight, and he trusted her even less after the attempt at treachery.
He grabbed two reeds and proceeded to rub them vigorously together. The mudhen tried to wriggle out from under his arm while he was distracted, but Maui had been prepared for this. He squeezed the lying bird hard enough to make her squawk and then rubbed the sticks until they broke. With a much-aggrieved sigh, he grabbed the alae and began to slowly twist her neck again. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I should have known better than to try to trick the clever Maui. I actually hid fire inside a green stick.”
Maui trusted her exactly as much as you would expect, which was not at all. Shocking no one, she was lying again. Not so much as a spark rose from his rubbing the green sticks. She told him desperately that the wood needed to be dry, not fresh. He grabbed two dry sticks and tried again, but they only got warm. He was closer, but not there yet. He wrung the alae’s neck harder until she was almost dead and she squawked that she was telling the truth this time, he just needed a different tree. He tried sticks from several trees until, at long last, one of them worked. “See? I told you the fire was hidden in the dry sticks.”
Maui nodded with a vicious grin. “You did indeed speak the truth. Eventually. After lying a whole fucking lot and trying to break our agreement over and over. I promised to spare your life if you gave me fire, but you made me rub a whole lot of bullshit to get there. Now, there’s just one more thing to rub.” He took up one of the fire sticks in one hand and held the alae tightly in the other. Eyes glinting, he rubbed the stick roughly on the top of her head until the feathers all fell out and the flesh was rubbed raw and pink. When she was squawking and screaming, Maui let her go and took his fire sticks back to his brothers. Ever since then, the Hawaiian mudhen has had a bald head as a souvenir of the time Maui learned the secret of fire.
There are several variations on this story, with Maui’s contest with the mudhens taking place at different places or with the alae being gods themselves or with the birds trying to get Maui to rub bananas together while they made their escape. In all of them, the end is the same with the birds punished and fire taken. The second broad version comes from the Samoan legends (with Ti’it’i being the name for the trickster Maui here, so don’t get too confused by the changing names).
A young Ti’it’i was visiting his father Talanga (known as Makeatutara in the Maori stories), a god of the underworld and good friends with Mafuie, god of earthquakes (a role filled by Ruaumoko in the Maori stories) whose home was in the land of perpetual fire. On this particular day, Ti’it’i watched as his father left his home in the upper world of the islands in secret. Talanga approached a sheer, blank rock wall and touched it with a quiet incantation, too soft for Ti’it’i to hear. As he spoke, a door appeared out of the rock and opened for him, closing again as soon as he was through. Ti’it’i rushed over, trying to get the door open, but no luck. Without the incantation, he wasn’t getting inside.
Several days went by before Ti’it’i had another chance at the door. His father once again headed through the door and this time, Ti’it’i was able to creep close enough to overhear the quiet words: “Divide, o rock, for I am Talanga and I come to work on my land, given to me by Mafuie.” Waiting long enough for his father to not be waiting for him on the other side, Ti’it’i hurried to the blank rock wall and did his best Talanga impression. It worked. The hidden door slid open, allowing the young demigod to slip into the cave beyond. He followed the smooth rock walls down, down, down into the bowels of the earth until he found his father laboring in the underworld.
Talanga was caught completely by surprise when his son sidled up beside him. “Whatcha doin’, pops?” The older god jumped, then shushed his trickster son. “Keep your damned voice down or you’ll piss off Mafuie. Believe me, you do NOt want to see him when he’s angry.” The boy obediently clammed up, content to spend time working beside his father. This went well until Ti’it’i saw smoke rising up from a dark crack in the rock and asked what it was. Talanga explained that it was smoke from the fire of Mafuie and explained what fire was and what it could do. This was meant as a warning to the young, curious godling but as you might expect, it had the opposite effect. Ti’it’i thought this fire shit sounded dope and was determined to go get himself some.
When his father was distracted with his work, the boy snuck off towards the source of the smoke. He followed the winding cave down to where Mafuie lived. “Hiya, Mafuie – I’m Ti’it’i. Can I have some of your fire to take back to my dad?” The fire and earthquake god was thoroughly charmed by the precocious youngster and agreed to lend him some fire. That was easy, right? Story over?
Ti’it’i carried the flames carefully up to his father’s workshop and placed it in the oven he had prepared. He had some taro there that he and his father had been cultivating and he was excited to cook it over his brand new fire. Just as everything was just about ready, Mafuie came upstairs. “Time’s up – did you have fun with my fire? Alright, give it back.” Ti’it’i didn’t want to give it back, but Mafuie wasn’t asking, he was telling. He blew the fire out and scattered the hot stones of the oven.
Ti’it’i…didn’t take it well. He hadn’t expected Mafuie to take his gift back, and certainly not in such a destructive and insulting way. He laid into the elder god, screaming at him about being a shithead. The god of destructive fire and earthquakes took that disrespect about as well as you’d expect, by which I mean he took it very poorly. He screamed right back at the impudent upstart godling. They got up in each other’s faces and in a blink, they were both throwing punches. Mafuie insisted that fire was his domain and he had every right to destroy what he had created; Ti’it’i retorted with ‘nu-uh’. As arguments go, it’s not the best. Fortunately his fighting was better than his wordplay at this tender age.
Mafuie might have the rage and raw violence, but Ti’it’i had the vim and vigor of youth and righteous anger to back it up. As the battle raged on, shaking the very island with it’s violence, Ti’it’i eventually gained the upper hand. He got Mafuie in a vicious armlock. The god tried to break out of it, but Ti’it’i twisted viciously and CRACK – off came Mafuie’s arm. They both froze for a moment in shock, but Ti’it’i recovered first. He got Mafuie’s other arm in a similar lock and began to twist.
Mafuie had already lost one arm and wasn’t keen on losing the other today. How was he supposed to govern earthquakes without at least his left arm? It was his duty to hold Samoa steady and level,to keep the earthquakes from getting out of control. He begged Ti’it’i to let his arm go so he could at least have a fighting chance of doing his job. The youngster listened to this desperate pleading and considered. He wasn’t a trickster for nothing and he realized that he had a chance to really capitalize on this. “What’ll you give me to keep your arm?”
Mafuie was desperate. He offered the younger god one hundred wives in exchange for his good left arm. Ti’it’i considered this for a moment before rejecting the offer. He was young yet to have an interest in wives. “What else ya got?” Mafuie thought quickly, his arm getting painfully tight. “What if I teach you how to make fire?” Ti’it’i smiled. “That’ll do.” He promised to keep the secret of the gods and learned the truth – when the gods had made the island, they had hidden fire in the branches of several trees. Humanity would discover it there one day when the time was right and learn that rubbing the sticks together could free the trapped fire. As for Mafuie, the stories say that Mafuie was exaggerating how badly he needed his arms. In fact, he has a long handle under the island that keeps it level for him and when he wants an earthquake, all he has to do is shake it. It’s said to be a good thing that Ti’it’i took his other arm – if Mafuie had both, he might just destroy the island in his merciless anger.
In a slightly different version of this story from the Hervey Islands, Maui and his brothers learned that their mother, guardian of the way to the hidden world, had a secret way to cook her food. He decided to follow her one to day to figure out the secret of cooked food. He didn’t want to be spotted, so he studied the birds until he figured out how to take the form of a pigeon, the bird he thought was strongest. He followed his mother down to the invisible world and found the god of fire living in a pile of banyan sticks. Maui turned back into a man and demanded the secret of fire. The god agreed on one condition – Maui let the fire god throw him into the sky.
Maui thought about it for all of a second before agreeing on one condition – after the fire god threw Maui, Maui got to throw the fire god. In turn, the fire god thought for only a moment before he agreed, figuring that Maui wouldn’t be able to throw anyone once he was dead from the fall. Hell, if he did it right, Maui might get launched out into the fucking stratusphere and never come back down at all. Always go first in a violence contest, right?
Maybe not when you’re up against a trickster. The fire god picked Maui up in his big strong fire arms, swung him a little, and then hurled him straight up. As soon as Maui went up, he transformed himself into a feather. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to throw a feather, but it doesn’t so much work. He floated to earth harmlessly and turned back into himself with a wicked grin. He used his power to amp up his strength, seized the god by his legs, and threw him violently into the air. As he fell, Maui caught him and promptly threw him back up over and over and over until he was battered and bruised and dizzy. He finally cried uncle and promised to teach Maui the secret of making fire if he would just fucking stop tossing him.
The Maori version of the story falls into the third camp. In this story, the people already had fire. Sort of. See, the great goddess Mahuika had gifted the people with fire at some distant point, but not the means to create it. They just kept the flames alive constantly so that they could continue to use it. One night, as Maui was digesting a particularly hearty meal, he stared into the cook fire and let his thoughts wander. Being a curious sort, he soon began to wonder just where fire came from exactly. It was a mystery, and Maui was feeling very detective-y.
That night, as everyone slept, Maui snuck across the island putting out each and every fire. By the time he was done creeping from village to village, not a single flicker of firelight remained in the entire world. Safely back in his own bed, Maui lay back and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
As morning dawned, an outcry of horror swept across the world as one by one, people realized that all the fires were dead. They cried out in anger and fear. How were they supposed to cook breakfast? How were they supposed to keep warm at night? Fire kept them safe, kept them comfortable – life without it would be very, very bad. They went to Taranga, who was their rangatira (meaning chief or leader) for help in solving the problem. “Someone will have to go and ask Mahuika for more of her fire.” That was not a task anyone was eager to undertake. All of the villagers had heard horror stories of the scorching mountain where the great goddess lived. They all looked around hoping that some other schmuck would volunteer.
Maui, secretly pleased that his plan seemed to be working (at least for some version of ‘plan’ and ‘work’), was more than happy to be that schmuck. Tarange gave her son a sideways look, possibly suspecting that he knew more than he was saying. “Be careful, Maui. You might be descended from Mahuika, but that won’t stop her from burning you to a very dead cinder if you try to pull one of your tricks on her.” Maui nodded seriously. “Don’t worry, mother. I’ll find my great ancestress Mahuika and bring back her fire to the world.” Taranga watched Maui go with a worried expression on her face. She noticed that he hadn’t actually promised to be careful or, you know, not try to trick the incredibly powerful and volatile goddess of fire.
Following Taranga’s directions, Maui found his way to the schoring mountain at the ends of the earth. It rose high on the horizon, peak shimmering red hot with barely contained fury. Maui swallowed. Now that he was here, this seemed like less of a good idea than it had back at the safety of the campfire. Still, he had got himself into this mess and there was no way out except through. As he neared, he saw a cave near the mountain’s base through the wavering heat haze. Whispering a karakia quietly to himself (a Maori prayer or incantation often used to try and invoke spiritual protection and guidance), he headed inside the cave.
Maui had thought he was ready for anything. He was wrong. As he entered the sacred mountain of Mahuika, the goddess rose up before him. Fire dripped from every pore; twisting tongues of flame writhed from her head in place of hair; where her eyes should have been there were only black, burned out pits. She sniffed the air delicately, somehow sifting out his scent through the relentless heat and heavy smell of ash in the air. “What mortal dares to enter my home?”
Maui straightened up and steeled himself for the encounter. “I am Maui, son of Taranga.” “Maui, huh?” “That’s right, the last born son, Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga.” “Well then, Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga, welcome to my home. Welcome to the source of my flame and the essence of my existence. Welcome, grandson.” She shifted closer, inhaling his scent deeply. Maui made sure to stand perfectly still as she approached. The heat was blistering, singeing his flesh, but he forced himself not to flinch as she neared. “And why have you come here, Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga?”
“The fires of the world have gone out, extinguished overnight. I have come to ask you for the gift of fire, that the people should not suffer.” Mahuika considered Maui’s words and then laughed, voice crackling like coals. “Then you shall have it.” Reaching down, she seized one of the nails of her burning fingers and, with a quick wrenching motion, pulled it off. She handed him the fiery nail with a smile. “Take this fire as a gift to your people. Honor this flame as you honor me.” Maui took the flickering flame and left the burning house of Mahuika.
For most heroes, that would be the end of the tale. Relic achieved, quest over. Maui wasn’t most heroes. As he walked out of the burning cave, that nagging question kept echoing in his mind. “If Mahuika’s fires went out, what would she do? If she had no fire left, where would she get more?” He looked at the nail in his hands then back at the cave. Shaking his head, he tossed the nail into a nearby stream with a hiss and went back inside. “I, uh, dropped it. I tripped and fell and lost it. Can I have another?” Mahuika was in a good mood (she didn’t get visitors often and was enjoying the company) so she agreed easily. It didn’t hurt that Maui was charismatic and likable.
Again, he left the cave, dropped the nail in the water, and headed right back inside. “Sorry, ancestress, it was the darndest thing: a fish splashed out of the water just as I was walking by and put the fire out. Can I have just one more?” Mahuika, believing in Maui’s tale of bad luck and clumsiness, shrugged and gave him another nail. They continued this way for the rest of the day, with Mahuika giving up her fingernails one by one and moving on to her toenails. At some point, this stopped being charmingly funny and started being seriously annoying. Eventually, even the gullible Mahuika realized that she was being had. When Maui predictably came back to ask for yet another nail after yet another unlikely accident, she was furious.
She plucked out her second to last toenail but, instead of handing it over, she hurled it to the ground at Maui’s feet. Flames sprouted from the ground where it landed in a rush of scalding heat, racing hungrily towards Maui’s tender flesh. He realized the game was up and raced from the cave. He made it outside but the fire was fast. It raced out to either side of him, quickly closing off his escape and trapping him in an ever-shrinking circle of deadly fire.
At least, he would have been trapped if he wasn’t Maui. He leapt into the air, transforming himself into a hawk as he jumped and climbing into the sky. It was a tactic that had served him well in the past, but he hadn’t considered just how very powerful Mahuika was. She poured more of her essence into the flames and they soared higher, chasing Maui’s bird form into the sky and singeing the undersides of his wings until they glowed a burning red. He needed to get the fuck out of here.
He poured on the speed and began to dive towards a river he spied, but the flames got there first. The heat was so unbelievably intense that the very river began to seethe and boil. Maui pulled desperately out of the dive before he could plunge into the now-deadly water. This was bad. This was very, very bad. He looked around for another escape route, but saw nothing. There was no way out. Mahuika was going to kill him.
With no other option, Maui gambled on another ancestor. He called upon Tawhirimatea, a weather god, including storms. Sky gods are usually assholes, but Tawhirimatea came through for Maui, sending a massive storm to put out the raging fires and cooling Mahuika’s red-hot mountain. Sure, she might have gotten a little carried away here, but she was absolutely justified in being pissed that Maui was just fucking with her. From her perspective, the sky god was definitely being an asshole, taking her dipshit grandson’s side in this.
The torrential downpour weakened Mahuika terribly. She was down, but not yet out. She still had one more weapon. Pulling out her very last toenail, she hurled it at the retreating Maui in anger. It’s not easy to hit a flying hawk at a distance with a toenail, so it should come as no surprise that she missed. The burning bit of the fiery goddess sailed over Maui’s head and into the trees, burning through the Mahoe, Totara, Patete, Pukatea, and Kaikomako trees, leaving behind a bit of its fire in each. These trees held on to that fire of Mahuika, considering it to be a great gift and blessing.
Maui returned home to his village without the promised fire. Instead, he brought something better – the secret of making fire. With the bundle of dry sticks he’d carried back with him, he showed his people how to rub them together to draw out the fire hidden inside. The villagers were grateful for this powerful gift, happy to be able to cook their food and light up the nights without fear that the fires would die forever. Even better (from Maui’s perspective anyway), he now knew the origin of fire and his curiosity was sated. For now. The Kahu, the hawk native to the area that Maui turned into during his escape attempt, still bears the red singed feathers along its underside as a reminder of just how close Maui came to getting his ass roasted for the sake of forbidden knowledge.
Like the fire thiefs in many other cultures, Maui is able to obtain the secret of fire (one of the most valuable tools of the ancient world) through cleverness, ingenuity, and sheer bravado. He is also driven by pure, unbridled curiosity that almost gets him burnt to a crisp or tossed into outer space. He perseveres and outsmarts the gods, thus earning their power for humanity. Since we can now relax in front of a roaring fire as Maui intended, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s victim is Irawaru.
In the Maori tales, Maui had a sister named Hina-uri who was married to a man named Irawaru. As we’ve seen, Maui had a well-earned reputation for skill and cleverness, so Irawaru was perfectly happy to work with his new brother-in-law. In some versions, Maui’s own brothers had died some years before during their many adventures, so he was happy to have a traveling companion again. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t still super jealous and eager to prove himself better at, well, everything.
They decided that it would be a good idea for them to go out hunting together the next day and spent the afternoon together carving fresh spears. After they had finished, Maui went back and made himself some notched barbs to go on his spear tips in secret (something that some stories say his mother Taranga told him about in the first place). They could slip on and off easily, so he only put them on when Irawaru wasn’t around (a real piece of technology made from hardened wood or the barbed tail of a stingray). It gave him one hell of an advantage during the next day’s hunting, and the vast majority of the birds they brought down together fell to Maui’s spears.
Maui couldn’t keep his little secret forever. Irawaru wasn’t as clever as Maui, but he was still more than observant enough to eventually figure out Maui’s secret. The demigod wasn’t thrilled about losing his leg up but Irawaru gave Maui enough praise for his innovation (even though it had really come from his mother) that his bruised ego was soothed. Things were a little strained between them but mostly okay until they decided to go fishing for eels. Irawaru built a snare the typical way, a basket with a hole for the eel to swim into. Unfortunately, that hole made just as effective an exit as an entrance, allowing the quick eels to slip out of the trap before Irawaru could pull it out of the water. As a result, he didn’t catch very many eels.
Maui had seen the problem with this method and had thought of a better way. He made a basket with a long funnel-shaped door. It was easy for the eel to slip in at the wide end, but it narrowed so much by the time the eel was inside that it could scarcely squeeze back into the hole to get out. It was a very effective trap with a door in the side that Maui could open to easily retrieve the eels. Irawaru again knew a good idea when he saw one and quickly adopted Maui’s superior method. Maui…didn’t care for that.
The demigod put a lot of pride and ego into his being the cleverest and bestest at everything he tried, and it galled him that Irawaru was able to figure out his tricks and steal them. It didn’t seem to matter that Irwawaru gave Maui all the credit and praised him for his cleverness – he didn’t like someone else being as good as he was at something. Frustrated, Maui seized his brother-in-law by the scruff of the neck and muttered an incantation over him. At these powerful words, Irawaru’s form shivered and changed. Maui bent him down, stretched and twisted his limbs, and pulled on his ears until there stood the very first dog.
Maui went back to the village all alone. Hina-uri was understandably worried when she saw her brother come back alone. “Where is my husband, Maui? Where is Irawaru? What have you done to him? What sorcery have you leveled against him?” Maui made no effort to deny that he had used his power on his brother-in-law. “Go out into the forest and call out ‘Moi! Moi!’” Filled with trepidation, Hina-uri did so. At her call, out rushed a long-haired animal leaping and barking around her excitedly. At once, she knew what Maui had done and she was crushed. She loved her husband and couldn’t stand losing him like this to her own damned brother. Weeping, she hurled herself into the sea never to be seen again.
There are a number of similar variations on the tale giving differing reasons why Maui was annoyed enough with Irawaru to transform him into a barking pupper. The Rua-nui say that Maui was pissed because Irawaru ate all of the small fish that they were going to use as bait while Maui was rowing them out to the fishing spot. With no bait, they could catch no fish and the entire day was wasted, prompting Maui’s transformative anger. The Arawa say that Maui was jealous of Irawaru’s success at fishing. When their lines got tangled trying to catch a particularly large fish, they got into an argument over who had actually caught it. The argument got heated enough (and Maui felt cheated enough) that he turned Irawaru into a dog when they got to shore. A different version of the Arawa story says that actually Irawaru was a selfish glutton who ate all the food while they were traveling together.
Here, we see a nice mix of Maui’s benevolent, mischievous, and downright cruel sides. He’s a trickster, for good and for ill, and sometimes that means good people get hurt by his volatile temper. Not everyone who gets tricked deserves it. Even so, while this was definitely a shitty outcome for ol’ Irawaru himself, it gave the world the fluffy goodness that is the doggo, so something good came out of it at least.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
Next time, we’re traveling back to old Latvia for the next part of the Bearslayer cycle. You’ll see that underwater palaces make great health spas, that magic mirrors aren’t as cool as ribbons from pretty ladies, and that you can totally paddle your way to friendship. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet a house spirit equal parts adorable and destructive. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.