It is the self-same process that is pictured in the sonorous hexameters:-- "Tum pater omnipotens fecundis imbribus Aether Coniugis in gremium laetae descendit, et omnes Magnus alit, magno commixtus corpore, fetus." But in the beginning Heaven lay close to the Earth and all was dim and dark.

There was life but not light.

So their children, tired of groping about within narrow and gloomy limits, conspired together to force them asunder and let in the day.

These were Tu, the scarlet-belted god of men and war, Tane, the forest god, and their brother, the sea-god.

With them joined the god of cultivated food, such as the kumara, and the god of food that grows wild--such as the fern-root.