"…according to a legend told in Hawaii, when a man named Ulu, dwelling near the present city of Hilo, died of famine. He and his wife had a sickly baby boy whose life was endangered by the general scarcity of food, and the man, distracted, had gone in prayer to the temple at Puueo, to learn from the god what should be done.

Now the god of that temple was of a type known in Hawaiian as the mo'o: which is a word meaning 'lizard', or 'reptile'. But the only reptile in Hawaii is a harmless, even affectionately regarded little lizard that scurries up and down the walls of people's houses and clings like a fly to ceilings, trapping insects with its quick tongue.

The manner in which the mythological system of the islands has magnified this innocuous creature to the proportions of a greatly dangerous divine dragon supplies one of the most graphic illustrations I know of a mythological process - seldom mentioned in the textbooks of our subject but of considerable force and importance nevertheless - to which the late Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy referred as land-náma, 'land naming' or 'land taking'.

Through land-náma, 'land-naming', or 'land taking', the features of a newly entered land are assimilated by an immigrant people to its imported heritage of myth. We have already noted the case of the role of the serpent assumed by the eel. We are now considering that of the same serpent role assumed by a harmless lizard.

We might also have considered the manner in which the Pilgrim Fathers and pioneers of America established their New Canaans, Nazareths, Sharons, Bethels, and Betlehems wherever they went. The new land, and all the features of the new land, are linked back as securely as possible to the archetypes - the spiritually, psychologically, and sociologically significant archetypes - of whatever mythological system the people carry in their hearts.

And through this process the land is spiritually validated, sanctified, and assimilated to the image of destiny that is the fashioning dynamism of the people's lives…"

"To proceed, then, with the legend of the origin of the breadfruit: When the man, Ulu, returned to his wife from his visit to the temple at Puueo, he said, 'I have heard the voice of the noble Mo'o, and he has told me that tonight, as soon as darkness draws over the sea and the fires of the volcano goddess, Pele, light the clouds over the crater of Mount Kilauea, the black cloth will cover my head. And when the breath has gone from my body and my spirit has departed to the realms of the dead, you are to bury my head carefully near our spring of running water. Plant my heart and entrails near the door of the house. My feet, legs, and arms, hide in the same manner. Then lie down upon the couch where the two of us have reposed so often, listen carefully throughout the night, and do not go forth before the sun has reddened the morning sky. If, in the silence of the night, you should hear noises as of falling leaves and flowers, and afterward as of heavy fruit dropping to the ground, you will know that my prayer has been granted: the life of our little boy will be saved.' And having said that, Ulu fell on his face and died.

His wife sang a dirge of lament, but did precisely as she was told, and in the morning she found her house surrounded by a perfect thicket of vegetation. 'Before the door,' we are told in Thomas Thrum's rendition of the legend, 'on the very spot where she had buried her husband's heart, there grew a stately tree covered over with broad, green leaves dripping with dew and shining in the early sunlight, while on the grass lay the ripe, round fruit, where it had fallen from the branches above. And this tree she called Ulu (breadfruit) in honor of her husband.

The little spring was concealed by a succulent growth of strange plants, bearing gigantic leaves and pendant clusters of long yellow fruit, which she named bananas. The intervening space was filled with a luxuriant growth of slender stems and twining vines, of which she called the former sugar-cane and the latter yams; while all around the house were growing little shrubs and esculent roots, to each one of which she gave an appropriate name.

Then summoning her little boy, she bade him gather the breadfruit and bananas, and, reserving the largest and best for the gods, roasted the remainder in the hot coals, telling him that in the future this should be his food. With the first mouthful, health returned to the body of the child, and from that time he grew in strength and stature until he attained to the fulness of perfect manhood.

He became a mighty warrior in those days, and was known throughout all the island, so that when he died, his name, Mokuola, was given to the islet in the bay of Hilo where his bones were buried; by which name it is called even to the present time."

(Campbell)