Part one. The origin traditions of Formosa's peoples, as recorded by James W. Davidson in The Island of Formosa, Past and Present (1903) — the first account of the island's peoples placed before English readers, built from the investigations of the Japanese scholar Y. Ino. The Chinese legend of the dragons of Woo-hoo-mun, the Five-Tiger Gate, who sported in the ocean depths and heaved up Formosa's mountains; the Vonum bundle of green grass where the ancestors' spirits gather; the Tsou sacred tree and its orchid; the Tsalisen ancestors who came down from heaven with twelve earthen jars; the Parizarizao chief the ancestors named in a dream, after the great drought; the Ami ancestors born from a stone, and the Ami who came over the sea on the back of a large tortoise; and the storm-driven strangers of Botel Tobago, the island of splendid boats and great rats. One further tradition in Davidson's record, the Puyuma account of the stone-born ancestors and the battle with the suns, stands held in the shelf register and is not read here; the Botel Tobago first-parents tradition is likewise not read, and one clause of the Tsou orchid tradition is not read, per the register in the shelf canon.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Chapters
0:04 The Dragons of Woo-hoo-mun
4:33 The Bundle of Green Grass
5:18 The Sacred Tree and the Orchid
6:16 The Twelve Earthen Jars
7:07 The Chief the Ancestors Named in a Dream
8:37 Born from a Stone
9:06 The Tortoise from over the Sea
11:58 The Strangers the Storm Brought
From The Island of Formosa, Past and Present (1903) by James W. Davidson, public domain — the traditions of the island's peoples as he recorded them, in his own prose.
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