Tregear. — Polynesian Knowledge of Cattle. 473 



connected with hogle, a spectre ; Welsh hiog, a gobhn ; our 

 hug and bugbear, a spectre ; and is the Irish |j?(X-a, an elf, the 

 " Puck " of Shakespeare.* Bugaboo, with its cattle termina- 

 tion {bit or bic), evidently belongs to pastoral demons. Welsh, 

 bw, threat, terror, bugbear ; bw-bachu, to scare ; bmv, a cow ; 

 bwla, a bull ; bwci, a hobgoblin ; piuca, fiend ; |«t'ci, goblin : 

 Spanish, bu, a word used to frighten children : German, bdse, 

 evil, devil : Danish, pokker, devil (in English, Piers Plowman 

 and Matthews's Bible give pouh for devil) : Gaelic, bodachs, 

 an evil spirit : Manx, boa, a cow, fear, affright ; boag, a 

 bogey; boo, fear: Scottish, bo (also bu and boo), a word of 

 terror, connected by Jamieson (" Scot. Diet.") with Teutonic 

 bauiv, larva, spectrum ; alsoinike, an evil spirit. Grimm, in his 

 " Teutonic Mythology," gives very many words on this form — 

 popel, pobelmann, popanz, &c. — as ghosts for frightening child- 

 ren, and beloiiging to the class of spirits called bull-man, 

 buller-man, p)oltergeist, &c. Icelandic, bola, to bully ; boli, bull. 

 In obsolete provincial English! we have bo, hobgobhn ; hogge, 

 bugbear ; boll, a ghost ; bole, a bull ; boman, a hobgoblin. 

 The w^ord seems everywhere. The tutelary deities of the 

 Battahs of Sumatra are called Bogus, and are the souls of 

 the dead. The Motu, a Polynesian-speaking people among 

 the blacks of New Guinea, call a fool bobo, as do the 

 Spanish; but boloa is "possession by an evil sphit." 

 The Malays of the Peninsula have an evil spirit called 

 Polong, an elfin creature which feeds on the blood of its 

 possessor. In Puck-hairy we have a sprite named after these 

 animal deities. Hairiness is one of their attributes. Thus 

 the Vulgate has " et p)ilosi saltabunt ibi" (Isaiah, xiii., 21), 

 where the LXX. has SatjuoVta. These bo words receive strongest 

 confirmation as to their ultimate signification when we com- 

 pare them with the "cow" words. Scottish coio or koiu, 

 a hobgoblin, to depress with fear. This is also the Eng- 

 lish sense "to cow," "to cower." Icelandic, kuga, to cow, 

 tyrannous (kusa, a cow). Scottish, cow-vian, a name for 

 the devil (just as "bull-man" and "bull-beggar"); cowin, an 

 alarm, a fright ; rvirry-cow, a goblin, the devil ; coiv-carl, a 

 bugbear ; water-coxv, a spirit of the w^aters. I think that 

 these words show that our " bogeys " had a cattle origin, and 

 that the Maori poke {youke, puck, &c.) and kakukahu {kow 

 of Scottish) have probably the same source. 



In conclusion, I will point out that the curious series of 

 "coincidences" is completed by the words for "herd." I 

 have considered that kaliu (Earotongan kau) is the same word 



* Keightley,mhis "Fairy Mythology," says that "■pixy" is "pucksy; " 

 pooka or phooka, a spectre, a dark-looking thing like a colt, 

 t Wright's " Provincial Diet." 



