Ba8.8 I feel rather convinced that the Rogo figure has been correctly located to day 100 (April 10). His neck is short, which suggests the view from Easter Island (south of the equator), where April corresponded to the autumn month of October in the north.
Rogo. Rogorogo: Originally, 'orators, bards' of Mangareva. Borrowed into the Rapanui language in 1871, it came to generically signify the wooden tablets incised with glyphs, the writing system itself, and the respective inscriptions. Earlier the term ta was used for the writings. Fischer. Mgv.: rogouru, ten. Mq.: onohuu, okohuu, id. Churchill. For in April 10 the Full Moon would reach the thong holding it all together, and the Sun would be in his 10th (rogouru) month - although named the 8th month (octo = 8 as in line Ba8). ... From the natives of South Island [of New Zealand] White [John] heard a quaint myth which concerns the calendar and its bearing on the sweet potato crop. Whare-patari, who is credited with introducing the year of twelve months into New Zealand, had a staff with twelve notches on it. He went on a visit to some people called Rua-roa (Long pit) who were famous round about for their extensive knowledge. They inquired of Whare how many months the year had according to his reckoning. He showed them the staff with its twelve notches, one for each month. They replied: 'We are in error since we have but ten months. Are we wrong in lifting our crop of kumara (sweet potato) in the eighth month?' Whare-patari answered: 'You are wrong. Leave them until the tenth month ... ... Proclus informs us that the fox star nibbles continuously at the thong of the yoke which holds together heaven and earth; German folklore adds that when the fox succeeds, the world will come to its end. This fox star is no other than Alcor, the small star g near zeta Ursae Majoris (in India Arundati, the common wife of the Seven Rishis, alpha-eta Ursae ...
In China they sounded wooden clappers to announce it was time to put the fires out, turning them into ashes - which would make it necessary to eat cold food for 3 days. ... In China, every year about the beginning of April, certain officials called Sz'hüen used of old to go about the country armed with wooden clappers. Their business was to summon the people and command them to put out every fire. This was the beginning of the season called Han-shih-tsieh, or 'eating of cold food'. For three days all household fires remained extinct as a preparation for the solemn renewal of the fire, which took place on the fifth or sixth day after the winter solstice [Sic!] ... ... She could see nothing, because the sun and the moon did not then exist; and then, she could not stand up because there was not enough room in the shellfish. Constantly hunting about she at last found a snail. To endow it with power she placed it under her arm, lay down and slept for three days ... The shellfish in question might well have been represented in Ba8-9, where Metoro mentioned kea. And when the Old Spider slept for 3 days it could, according to the B text, have corresponded to the first 3 days of April. 8 * 11 (Ba8-11) → Ba8-8. If the solemn renewal of the fire took place in April 4 (in the day after three days of preparations), then the winter solstice ought to have been in day 94 (April 4) - 6 = 87 (March 31) or in day 88 (March 31 in a leap year). As we remember 88 was represented by the weight of the huge door-stone Polyphemus placed in front of his cave before he kindled his fire: ... Odysseus and his fleet were now in a mythic realm of difficult trials and passages, of which the first was to be the Land of the Cyclopes, 'neither nigh at hand, nor yet afar off', where the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, son of the god Poseidon (who, as we know, was the lord of tides and of the Two Queens, and the lord, furthermore, of Medusa), dwelt with his flocks in a cave. 'Yes, for he was a monstrous thing and fashioned marvelously, nor was he like to any man that lives by bread, but like a wooded peak of the towering hills, which stands out apart and alone from others.' Odysseus, choosing twelve men, the best of the company, left his ships at shore and sallied to the vast cave. It was found stocked abundantly with cheeses, flocks of lambs and kids penned apart, milk pails, bowls of whey; and when the company had entered and was sitting to wait, expecting hospitality, the owner came in, shepherding his flocks. He bore a grievous weight of dry wood, which he cast down with a din inside the cave, so that in fear all fled to hide. Lifting a huge doorstone, such as two and twenty good four-wheeled wains could not have raised from the ground, he set this against the mouth of the cave, sat down, milked his ewes and goats, and beneath each placed her young, after which he kindled a fire and spied his guests ...
The Old Spider gave the Snail (the Moon) power when she slept for 3 days. However, it was not at a solstice and therefore the armpit was the proper place for warming up: ... Marija Gimbutas: 'To sleep within the Goddess's womb was to die and to come to life anew'. In a system of reincarnation the old one must die in order to be reborn, of course. At midsummer Sun comes to a standstill, and this must therefore be an occasion when the 'flame of life' had to be transported into a new body ...
Then the procedure was repeated with another set of 3 days to empower a similar but bigger snail (the Sun). ... Constantly hunting about she at last found a snail. To endow it with power she placed it under her arm, lay down and slept for three days. Then she let it free, and still hunting about she found another snail bigger than the first one, and treated it in the same way. Then she said to the first snail: 'Can you open this room a little, so that we can sit down?' The snail said it could, and opened the shell a little. Old-Spider then took the snail, placed it in the west of the shell, and made it into the moon. Then there was a little light, which allowed Old-Spider to see a big worm. At her request he opened the shell a little wider, and from the body of the worm flowed a salted sweat which collected in the lower half-shell and became the sea. Then he raised the upper half-shell very high, and it became the sky. Rigi, the worm, exhausted by this great effort, then died. Old-Spider then made the sun from the second snail, and placed it beside the lower half-shell, which became the earth ...
Kau. 1. To move one's feet (walking or swimming); ana oho koe, ana kau i te va'e, ka rava a me'e mo kai, if you go and move your feet, you'll get something to eat; kakau (or also kaukau), move yourself swimming. 2. To spread (of plants): ku-kau-áte kumara, the sweet potatoes have spread, have grown a lot. 3. To swarm, to mill around (of people): ku-kau-á te gagata i mu'a i tou hare, there's a crowd of people milling about in front of your house. 4. To flood (of water after the rain): ku-kau-á te vai haho, the water has flooded out (of a container such as a taheta). 5. To increase, to multiply: ku-kau-á te moa, the chickens have multiplied. 6. Wide, large: Rano Kau, 'Wide Crater' (name of the volcano in the southwest corner of the island). 7. Expression of admiration: kau-ké-ké! how big! hare kau-kéké! what a big house! tagata hakari kau-kéké! what a stout man! Vanaga. To bathe, to swim; hakakau, to make to swim. P Pau., Mgv., Mq.: kau, to swim. Ta.: áu, id. Kauhaga, swimming. Churchill. The stem kau does not appear independently in any language of Polynesian proper. For tree and for timber we have the composite lakau in various stages of transformation. But kau will also be found as an initial component of various tree names. It is in Viti that we first find it in free existence. In Melanesia this form is rare. It occurs as kau in Efaté, Sesake, Epi, Nguna, and perhaps may be preserved in Aneityum; as gau in Marina; as au in Motu and somewhere in the Solomon islands. The triplicity of the Efaté forms [kasu, kas, kau] suggests a possible transition. Kasu and kas are easy to be correlated, kasu and kau less easy. They might be linked by the assumption of a parent form kahu, from which each might derive. This would appear in modern Samoan as kau; but I have found it the rule that even the mildest aspirate in Proto-Samoan becoming extinct in modern Samoan is yet retained as aspiration in Nuclear Polynesia and as th in Viti, none of which mutations is found on this record. Churchill 2. Tuu. 1. To stand erect. 2. Mast, pillar, post. Van Tilburg. 1. To stand erect, mast, pillar, post; tuu noa, perpendicular; tanu ki te tuu, to set a post; hakatu tuu, to step a mast; tuu hakamate tagata, gallows; hakatuu, to erect, to establish, to inactivate, to form, immobile, to set up, to raise. P Mgv., Mq., Ta.: tu, to stand up. 2. To exist, to be. Mgv.: tu, life, being, existence. 3. To accost, to hail; tuu mai te vaka, to hail the canoe. Mgv.: tu, a cry, a shout. 4. To rejoin; tuua to be reunited. 5. Hakatuu, example, mode, fashion, model, method, measure, to number. PS Sa.: tu, custom, habit. Fu.: tuu, to follow the example of. 6. Hakatuu, to disapprove; hakatuu riri, to conciliate, to appease wrath. 7. Hakatuu, to presage, prognostic, test. 8. Hakatuu, to taste. 9. Hakatuu, to mark, index, emblem, seal, sign, symbol, trace, vestige, aim; hakatuu ta, signature; akatuu, symptom; hakatuua, spot, mark; hakatuhaga, mark; hakatuutuu, demarcation. Churchill. 1. To arrive: tu'u-mai. 2. Upright pole; to stand upright (also: tutu'u). 3. To guess correctly, to work out (the meaning of a word) correctly: ku-tu'u-á koe ki te vânaga, you have guessed correctly [the meaning of] the word. 4. To hit the mark, to connect (a blow). 5. Ku-tu'u pehé, is considered as... ; te poki to'o i te me'e hakarere i roto i te hare, ku-tu'u-á pehé poki ra'ura'u, a child who takes things that have been left in the house is considered as a petty thief. Tu'u aro, northwest and west side of the island. Tu'u haígoígo, back tattoo. Tu'u haviki, easily angered person.Tu'u-toga, eel-fishing using a line weighted with stones and a hook with bait, so that the line reaches vertically straight to the bottom of the sea. Tu'utu'u, to hit the mark time and again. Tu'utu'u îka, fish fin (except the tail fin, called hiku). Vanaga. ... To the Polynesian and to the Melanesian has come no concept of bare existence; he sees no need to say of himself 'I am', always 'I am doing', 'I am suffering'. It is hard for the stranger of alien culture to relinquish his nude idea of existence and to adopt the island idea; it is far more difficult to acquire the feeling of the language and to accomplish elegance in the diction under these unfamiliar conditions. Take for an illustrative example these two sentences from the Viti: Sa tiko na tamata e kila: there are (sit) men who know. Sa tu mai vale na yau: the goods are (stand) in the house. The use of tu for tiko and of tiko for tu would not produce incomprehensibility, but it would entail a loss of finish in diction, it would stamp the speaker as vulgar, as a white man ... Savage life is far too complex; it is only in rich civilization that we can rise to the simplicity of elemental concepts ... Churchill 2. And, indeed, the shellfish glyph can be found twice in line Ba8, the second one 13 days after the first one:
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