292 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



There have been few attempts hitherto made to explain 

 the meaning of the war-canoe spirals. One writer* says that 

 he was informed by an old Maori that it (the spiral) was 

 copied fi'om the uncurling frond of the maraaku tree-fern. A 

 young frond of this kind is called " pitau," and so are the 

 canoe spirals in some places. I am inclined to think that the 

 process has been reversed, because " pitau " in its best-known 

 sense means not only the bow-piece, but the whole war-canoe 

 itself — that is, if such war-canoe has a figure-head with a 

 body and arms. Again, the fern-frond is a single spiral, while 

 the carved bow-piece is a double spiral. The skin-mark on 

 the thumb has also been suggested, but I do not know if from 

 any authority. 



I have stated in my Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dic- 

 tionary that the coils of the war-canoe bow-piece were signs 

 or representations of Winiwini, the god of the cobv/eb. This 

 I did on the personal authority of Mr. John White, author of 

 "The Ancient History of the Maori," and an erudite Maori 

 scholar, who assured me that this was the fact. If this was 

 so, it is a strong confirmation of the sivastika theory, for it 

 was most probable that Winiwini was a sivastika cobweb like 

 that drawn by the Chinese as a sign of " good luck." I pre- 

 sent a copy of the Chinese picture (fig. 13), not that it is like 

 a real cobweb, but as a painting of a "good-luck" sign. 

 Whether any spider ever made such a web is exceedingly 

 doubtful, and we must take the account given by the Chinese 

 with a grain of salt, but they relate as follows : " Fung Tse, of 

 the Tang Dynasty, records a practice among the people of 

 Loh-yang to endeavour on the 7th of the seventh month of 

 each year to obtain spiders to weave the sivastika on their 

 web. Kung-Ping- Chung, of the Sung Dynasty, says that the 

 people of Loh-yang believe it to be good luck to find the 

 swastika woven by spiders over fruits or melons."! Not only 

 did the Chinese have this fancy, but it pervaded Indo-Euro- 

 pean mythology. De Gubernatis, in his " Zoological Mytho- 

 logy,"]: states that the evening and morning aurora are com- 

 pared to the spider and the spider's web. " If the sun dies 

 without clouds, if the luminous spider shows itself in the 

 western sky, it augurs for the mori'ow a fine morning and a 

 fine day." Here, then, we see for the firsc time why the solar 

 emblem should have been turned into a sign of "good luck." 

 It was when the "luminous spider," the sun without clouds, 

 augured good luck for the morrow. To notice how very 

 ancient the idea is you have only to turn to the Eig-Veda, 



* Hamilton, "Maori Art," pt. i., p. 11, note, 

 t Smithsonian Report, 1894, p. 800. 

 I Vol. ii., 162. 



