Qat

Banks Islands · deity · Banks Islands traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification

Qat is the great vui (spirit-being) and culture-hero of the Banks Islands, most fully recorded on Mota and Vanua Lava. He was born at Alo Sepere on Vanua Lava from a stone, his mother Qatgoro, which burst asunder to bring him forth; he had no father and was one of twelve brothers. Qat is credited with fashioning the first men and women, whom he cut from the wood of the tavisoviso tree and quickened by drumming and dancing before them, and with ordering the islands, canoes, food-plants and animals. When the world knew only unbroken day he sailed to purchase night from the being Qong, and so instituted sleep, the dawn and the alternation of day and night. Much of the cycle turns on the jealousy of his brothers, who covet his wife Ro Lei and repeatedly try to kill him, and on his rescue each time by Marawa the spider. Codrington notes that Qat was nowhere worshipped as a god but was everywhere the hero of the foremost body of Banks Islands story.

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