Season 101 · Episode 1 — the opening of the Samoan shelf of KacheliTV World Classics: tales from Samoa, read aloud as printed in George Turner's collection.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
THE BOOK BEHIND THIS EPISODE
George Turner of the London Missionary Society, Samoa, a Hundred Years Ago and Long Before (London: Macmillan, 1884). Turner lived and worked in Samoa for many years, and his book gathers the traditions, stories, and customs of the islands as the Samoans told them. Most of the book is a record of customs and beliefs; its tale-bearing chapters were read in full and screened under this shelf's content rule before anything was built. Of the tale and legend material censused in the shelf register, nine short pieces are told here. The rest stand named, each with its reason, in the shelf register — the excluded pieces are not told, and no completeness is claimed for the book.
IN THIS EPISODE
0:35 Introduction
2:01 Tangaloa Makes the Land — Tangaloa makes the heavens and the earth, and sends his daughter down as the snipe Turi to search for land in the empty ocean.
3:59 The Gods Decide How Man Shall Die — the gods meet to settle the end of man's life, and a shower of rain breaks up the meeting at the deciding moment.
5:44 How Samoa Got Its Name — the rocks and the earth have a child, Moa, and everything that grows is made sacred to him: Sa ia Moa — Samoa.
7:12 When the Heavens Fell Down — of old the heavens fell, and people crawled; the plants, and then a thirsty traveller, push the sky back up.
8:37 The Child of the Sun — the son of the sun climbs a tree, catches his father with a noose of vine, and wins blessings — and, the second time, a slower sun and longer days.
11:19 Sina in the Moon — Sina, beating out bark-cloth in a time of famine, asks the rising moon for a bite for her child; the moon comes down and takes her up, child, board, and mallet.
12:25 When Everything Could Talk — the golden age when all things spoke and quarrelled: the stones fought the grass, the grass the trees, the trees the creepers.
14:17 The Rat Who Lent His Wings — the bat borrows the rat's wings and never brings them back; and why the bananas hang their heads while the plantain stands erect.
15:52 The Fowl and the Turtle — the fowl and the turtle agree that the spring belongs to whoever is first there in the morning.
Narration: Amos. Music: the instrumental theme "Glacial Forest" is heard at the opening and at the close, and in a short excerpt between the stories; there is no music under the narration.
