Ina and the Shark
Ina and the Shark is also depicted on the front side
of $3 Cook Islands paper currency
There are other Cook Islands Currency notes on other pages.
The Legend on the Front of the Notes:
ALthough the colour pattern changes from note to note, the obverse side of all notes is identical. The design has been adopted from a painting by a local artist, Mr. Rick Welland and it depicts the legend of Ina and the shark.
Folklore has it that in Eastern Polynesid there was a god of the Ocean called Tinirau. He lived on a floating island clled the Sacred Isle Motu-Tpau and his loved one Ina is told of in a song from the island of Mangaia:
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'Like a solitary tree is Ina
Who commited herself to the winds
Ina invoked the aid of many fish
To bear her gaily on their backs
The lordy shark to convey her safely
To the royal Tinirau 'er the sea
Alas the bruised head of the angry monster
Who hitherto had obeyed the trembling maid
Who opened a coconut
On her voyage to the Sacred Isle
Softly she beats the drum
Tinirau is enchanted
By the music of the lovely one.'
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click here for enlarged images
Rick Welland Paintings Gallery
That is the song of the legend. The story goes that Ina plunged into the sea to search for Tinirau and first called on the fish to help her. They were too small and she was tipped into the shallow lagoon. Four attempts got her no further than the outer reef and the fish that tried to help her were premanently marked by the beatings she gave them. Then a sea-going shark agreed to carry her on his back.
On the journey she felt thirsty and the shark raised his dorsal fin so that she could crack her first coconut. This she did and satisfied her thirst. Again she grew thirsty and this time, as depicted in the design, she cracked the coconut on the shark's head. At once the shark shook her off and dived and she was only rescued when Tekea the Great, the king of all sharks, rose from the depths, drove off the other sharkes, and took her to Tinirau's island. However the blow the gave to her first benefactor raised a bump on the shark's head and to this day that is called Ina's bump.
