Has it any meaning?
Is it more than the puerile fable of savages?
Let us see whether some of those unconscious tricks of speech to which I referred in the introductory chapter have not disfigured a true nature myth.

Perhaps those common processes of language, personification and otosis, duly taken into account, will enable us to restore this narrative to its original sense.
In the Algonkin tongue the word for Giant Rabbit is _Missabos_, compounded from _mitchi_ or _missi_, great, large, and _wabos_, a rabbit.

But there is a whole class of related words, referring to widely different perceptions, which sound very much like _wabos_.

They are from a general root _wab_, which goes to form such words of related signification as _wabi_, he sees, _waban_, the east, the Orient, _wabish_, white, _bidaban_ (_bid-waban_), the dawn, _waban_, daylight, _wasseia_, the light, and many others.

Here is where we are to look for the real meaning of the name _Missabos_.