Vanuatu

(map)

Tilik and Tarai, who lived near a sacred spring where they were making the land, discovered by the taste of their cabbage that their mother had been urinating in their food. They exchanged the food and ate hers. In anger, she rolled away the stone which had confined the sea, and the sea poured out in a great flood. This was the origin of the sea.

Roheim, 1952, 152.

The legendary hero Qat made a great canoe out of one of the largest trees in a dense forest at the center of the island of Gaua. While he worked on it, his brothers jeered at him for building a canoe so far from the sea. When the canoe was finished, he gathered into his canoe his family and some of all the living creatures, down to the smallest ant, and he fastened a cover over it. A great deluge of rain came; the hollow in the center of the island filled with water which broke through the hills where a great waterfall still descends. The water carried the canoe out to sea and out of sight. The natives say Qat took the best of everything with him and look forward to his return.

Frazer, 1919, 240-241.

Naareau the Elder created the earth, but the sky and the earth clove together with darkeness between them, for there was no separation. Naareau the Younger, walking on the overside of the sky, decided to go between, and with a spell, created a slight cleft; he tapped on the sky three times, and on the third tap it opened. He heard breathing within, created the First Creature, a bat, by rubbing his fingers together, and told it to look around. The Bat reported finding a Company of Fools and Deaf Mutes. At Naareau's direction, the Bat landed on their foreheads and told Naareau their names. Naareau crawled in the cleft and, with the Bat as his guide, went to the people. Naareau told them to push up, and the sky was lifted a little, but they could lift it only so high since the sky was rooted to the land. Naareau sent Naabawe, one of the people, to summon Riiki, the conger eel. Riiki was sleeping and bit Naabawe when he was called. Naareau made a slip-noose and took two of Octopus's ten legs for bait (which is why octopuses have only eight legs today). With these, Naareau caught Riiki and told it to push up on the sky against the land. While Riiki pushed, Great Ray, Turtle, and Octopus tore at the roots of the sky while Naareau sang. The Company of Fools and Deaf Mutes stood by laughing. The roots of the sky were torn loose. The sky was pushed high and the land sank. But the sky had no sides, so Naareau sang and pulled down its sides so it was shaped like a bowl. The Company of Fools and Deaf Mutes were left swimming in the sea; they became the sea creatures.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Patterns of Creativity Mirrored in Creation Myths (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1986), 151-154, 170.