Qat (deity) - Mythology

Mythology

Qat was born when his Father, a stone, exploded. He has eleven brothers, all called Tagaro (Tagaro the Foolish, Tagaro the Wise, etc.), and a companion, Marawa, who takes the form of a spider.

Along with creating islands and covering them with plant and animal life, Qat made the first three pairs of men and women by carving them from dracaena wood and then playing drums to make them dance, bringing them to life through music. One story recounts how Marawa, envious of Qat's creations, carved his own figures and brought them to life, but then grew tired of them and buried them for a week. When he dug them up, they had rotted, and this is how death came to be.

When his brothers became tired of daylight, Qat created night and taught his brothers how to sleep. When they had slept enough he took a piece of red obsidian and sliced through Night, thus making Dawn.

One day Qat came upon a group of sky maidens who had taken off their wings to bathe. He quickly buried one pair of wings so that one girl had to remain behind, and in time she became his wife, Ro-Lei. They lived together until one day Qat's mother reproached her daughter-in-law and made her cry. Ro-Lei's tears washed away the earth covering her wings and she put them on and flew away. Qat shot an arrow with a rope tied to it into the roots of a great banyan tree in the sky and climbed after her into the sky world, but later as he climbed down with Ro-Lei, the root snapped and he plunged to his death, while she flew safely away.

In other versions of the story Qat does not die but sails away in a canoe, promising to return one day.

Friedrich Ratzel in The History of Mankind Vol. 1 Page 313 in 1896 provided another version of the story as follows.

"…among the Banks Islanders the supreme god, Qat, emerges from a stone, which was his mother; and then with the help of his companion, Marawa, creates the rest of the world. Marawa is invoked with Qat in all emergencies, and may easily be recognised as the legendary Maui of New Zealand and Hawaii. Qat was doomed to be slain, but succeeded in climbing a nutmeg-tree. He had hardly reached the top when, by the arts of his hostile brothers, the tree grew higher and higher, and became of such circumference that Qat could not have got down again, had not Marawa, seeing his friend's difficulty, blown to earth a thread, or a hair from his head."

Nowadays, the story of Qat which is most popular among the islanders of northern Vanuatu tells how Qat, in Vanua Lava, built his canoe with the help of the spider spirit Marawa; how the canoe was then stolen by Qat's eleven brothers, who sailed it to the nearby island of Gaua; and how they all had to defeat the giant of that island, Qasavara.