446 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



It abounds with obsolete words and archaic forms, and is 

 most difficult to translate, but is a marvel of poetic genius. 

 In force and vigour, in imaginative power, in beauty of diction, 

 it is unequalled in its own particular line. 



The natives fully recognised that a poem of this class was 

 a piece of work of no common order ; and they had their own 

 theory about the Divine afflatus. According to the authority 

 I have already quoted, " the old Maoris even professed to 

 have heard songs, of a highly curious character, sung by the 

 spirits of the dead, and by fancied atuas, supernatural beings, 

 while engaged in fishing far out at sea." Like the ancient 

 Greeks, they firmly believed in Naiads, Dryads, and Nereids, 

 and made them conciliatory offerings. Bather than grieve the 

 gentle wood-nymphs, the old Maoris would trudge long dis- 

 tances in quest of dead timber and drift-wood, so as not to break 

 or destroy the graceful shrubs by river-side or estuary-shore. 

 What a contrast when the civilised European made his 

 appearance ! In this belief in sylvan divinities we have one 

 of those touches of nature which make the whole world kin. 

 Milton and Shelley to the contrary, Christianity has not 

 expelled the guardian spirits of the woods and streams — it 

 seems merely to have changed their titles. Ever and anon, in 

 some French or German village, the Naiad still appears to 

 some wandering maiden, the healing fountain breaks forth 

 where her foot has trod, and another sect is added to the 

 thousand- and-one already in existence. It is true that the 

 vision appears in the form of some venerated picture, and is 

 given a New Testament name ; but she is one of the nymphs 

 that the Hellenes revered of old, and that the Maoris knew so 

 well in the woodlands before the destructive pakeha came and 

 ravaged them with fire and steel. Science has tried even 

 harder than religion to exorcise the guardian spirits of land 

 and sea; but it cannot expel them from literature. Who can 

 say that it may not yet have to recognise them in Nature? 



Is it possible for the man who has his own library, and 

 access to still larger collections of books, to mentally place 

 himself in the position of the intelligent Maori, with only the 

 book of Nature and the other book of ancestral tradition 

 inscribed upon his memory? The Maori was schooled to 

 verbal accuracy, and had little, if any, external mnemonic aid. 

 In his power of correctly reciting song, proverb, and genealogy 

 he is, compared with the reference-hunting pakeha, a strong- 

 limbed man beside one on crutches. 



It remains now to inquire how far this " savage " literature 

 affected life and character. The natives possessed alert intel- 

 lect and vivid imagination, with the power of swift and accurate 

 observation ; and this traditional lore, we have to remember, 

 was to them all that is represented in our case by Bible, 



