602 Transactions. — Miscellaneoics. 



this paper, mention has been repeatedly made of incidents sup- 

 posed to be Aryan, if not exclusively European. Most of us 

 have read the old fairy stories about " swan maidens," of whom 

 Grimm* says : " Then-s is the power to fly or swim ; they love 

 to linger on the sea-shore. . . . When they bathe in the 

 cooling flood, they lay down on the bank the swan-ring, the 

 swan-shift. . . . The myth of Volundr we meet with again, 

 in an Old-High-German poem, which puts doves in the place 

 of swans : three doves fly to a fountain, but when they touch 

 ground they turn into maidens." So Maui stole his mother's 

 feather-dress, and turned himself into a dove or pigeon ; and 

 Eupe performs the same feat. Again, the tendrils of the vine 

 hanging from the heavens, and up which Tawhaki climbed, 

 swung down for us also in our childhood's story of Jack and 

 the Bean-stalk. But it is to two of the loveliest legends in 

 classical literature that I wish to compare our shorter myths 

 recited above. The heavenly maiden, coming secretly down to 

 repose by the side of her mortal husband, is Selene, the Moon, 

 stealing to the slumbers of Endymion : she — 



" Kisses the closed eyes 

 Of him, who slumbering lies." 



That the Moon, in the Mangaian myth, should not be a 

 "maiden of heavenly race" but a male deity, is in accordance 

 with a curious "twist" peculiar to Mangaian legends, many of 

 the celebrated Polynesian personages there changing sex. The 

 second story is that of the immortal wife seeing the mortal hus- 

 band getting grey and old. Those who have read Tennyson's 

 beautiful poem on the old Greek mythus will remember : — 



" How can my nature longer mix with thine ? 

 Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold 

 Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet 

 On all thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam 

 Floats up from those dim fields about the homes 

 01 happy men that have the power to die, 

 And grassy barrows of the happier dead. 

 Release me, and restore me to the ground ; 

 Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave ; 

 Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn ; 

 1, earth in earth, forgot these empty courts, 

 And thee returning on thy silver wheels." 



The Polynesian goddess was more kind, in giving the rainbow 

 bridge down which the aged feet might pass back to the world ; 

 but this bridge of the rainbow is cherished in Scandinavian 

 mythology as the lii/rost, the rainbow bridge along which the 

 souls of the heroes pass to the breast of Odin. 



Hnia, or Siua, (the Natives of the extreme North of New 

 Zealand pronounce this word as if written by an Englishman, 

 "Sheenah,") with the meaning of white or silvery, is found in 

 most Polynesian dialects,! and is a part of the moon's name 



« ti 



Teutonic Mythology." 

 t And probably in our own Teutonic speech as " sheen," or " shine." 



