Note 9 — Chapter VI · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: MYTHS AND LEGENDS

I will next consider not a single legend but a number of different stories, running through all of which we can find a single major motive. I have recorded9 three legends which relate, with some differences of detail, how in the beginning the ancestors had no fire, how fire was introduced by one of them, and how many of them, being burnt or frightened, were turned into animals of different kinds. In one version10 the sea-eagle came into the camp of the ancestors and threw fire amongst them; whereby many of them being frightened were turned into animals. Another version is very similar, the chief actor, however, being the prawn11. In an Akar-Bale version Dim-do̱ri, now a fish, obtained the fire and burnt some of the ancestors with it so that they became fishes12.