White. — On the Bird Moa and its Aliases. 263 



we have proof, owing to special names built up and originating 

 in the noisy disposition of both species, as pipipi, a turkey, 

 from pipi, the cry of a bird, the cry of a child. This I take to 

 equal our word "gobbler," or the Scotch "bubbly-jock." 

 Now, instead of the Maori treating the fowl as an old friend 

 and naming it " moa," a new name was invented, founded on 

 an original Polynesian word — heihei, noise; Hawaiian, hoo- 

 heihei, a drum, to beat a drum, which would seem to mean 

 the noisy bird, heihei, the domestic fowl. This selecting of 

 a word denoting the noisy habit of the fowl corresponds 

 exactly with the origin of our word "hen," proving that the 

 people of Europe and those of far-away New Zealand first 

 studied the habits of the bird and then gave it a name 

 suitable thereto. Professor Skeat gives : " Hen, from Anglo- 

 Saxon henn, hen, hcen ; a feminine form (by vowel change) 

 from Anglo-Saxon liana, a cock, literally ' a singer,' from 

 his crowing; chief form, Latiu can-ere, to sing." An old 

 word which I remember in my young days, but which now 

 seems obsolete, is chanticleer, from the French chant, singing, 

 song ; le chant div coq, the crowing of the cock, which is from 

 the same root, kan. 



As if to give us double assurance that the word "moa" 

 was already in use, they invented a second name for the 

 domestic fowl, tikaokao, apparently from ti, to deafen with 

 clamour, and not the word kaokao, the ribs, the side of the 

 body, but meaning a sound approximate to the cry of the 

 bird, as " the one who loudly calls ko.okao.'' 1 This word tikao- 

 kao being of onomatopoetic origin — that is, from the cry of the 

 bird — compares with our word "cock." We find the allied form 

 in Malay kukuk, crowing of cocks, and kakak, cackling of hens; 

 and our word "cackle," from middle English kakelen, mean- 

 ing to keep on saying kak ; and Sanscrit knkkuta, a cock. 

 Now, I will boldly advance the theory that the domestic fowl 

 was brought to the Polynesian islands after the time when 

 the Maori left the islands of Polynesia, which would give some 

 four hundred years till the time of Captain Cook, who found 

 poultry in abundance in many of the islands ; and that the Poly- 

 nesians are the remnant of a people who formerly inhabited a 

 large southern continent now chiefly submerged or disappeared 

 beneath the sea, which gives these people their tradition of 

 "the Deluge" — a land where all kinds of moa and kindred 

 birds existed in great plenty. In this land of giant birds the 

 Polynesian ancestors lived and ate the moa, and in this lost 

 country originated both the bird and its name of " moa.'" 

 This land may not have disappeared as a whole suddenly, 

 but as the plains became slowly submerged the heights be^ 

 came islands, and so the Polynesian people became navi- 

 gators of the intervening seas. But in later time some more 



