The Fire-Fetching Toad
Bunun · numen · Bunun traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
In the Bunun deluge myth, when the ancestors marooned on the mountain summits had no fire, the toad was the first creature to volunteer to fetch it from a distant burning peak. Carrying an ember, it swam back through the floodwaters, but when it dived the fire was extinguished; the kaipis bird then completed the quest. Despite its failure the toad is honoured in Bunun tradition: killing toads is traditionally forbidden in memory of its courage, and some tellings attribute the warty blisters of the toad's skin to the burns it suffered. The episode appears in the Bunun texts collected by Ogawa and Asai (1935) and in Ho Ting-jui's comparative treatment of Formosan flood myths (1971).
Domains
- fire
Powers
- to swim the floodwaters carrying embers on its back
Sources
- The toad of the Bunun deluge myth, the first animal to attempt to carry fire to the flood-stranded ancestors; though its ember was quenched, its effort earned it a lasting protective taboo.: Ho, Ting-jui. A Comparative Study of Myths and Legends of Formosan Aborigines. Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971. (secondary); Ogawa, Naoyoshi, and Erin Asai. 原語による台湾高砂族伝説集 [The Myths and Traditions of the Formosan Native Tribes]. Tokyo: Tōkō Shoin, 1935. (secondary)