486 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



4. If tlie last be the case, why, against all rules known at 

 present to philologists, should this vital word be shared by the 

 inflected languages of Persia and Arabia, the agglutinative 

 speech of Thibet and Malaysia, and the monosyllabic tongues 

 of China and its islands ? 



Akt. LXV. — Polynesian Folk-lore. 



"Hina's Voyage to the Sacred Isle." 



By E. Tregeae, F.K.G.S. 



[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 8th September, 1886.] 



In venturing to commence a paper on the subject of Polynesian 

 Folk-lore from the comparative mythologist's point of view, I 

 do so with great diffidence, as the field is so enormous as to 

 extend itself beyond any mental vision. But in this vast area 

 are mines so rich that some reward is sure to fall to the lot of 

 the diligent worker, however clumsy he may be ; and if he is 

 not gifted with the ability to discover truth, he may assist in its 

 elucidation by others. Those who have made it their pleasure 

 and business to collect all the procurable myths and folk-tales 

 of these islands, in a generation from which the knowledge is 

 fast passing away, and dying with its elder men, have done an 

 incalculable service to Science : for the student of a century 

 hence, however earnestly he may seek to gather such traditions, 

 will search in vain for stories, lost, (as the Maori proverb says) 

 " like the losing of the moa ;" and, moreover, could such tales 

 be collected, they would be tainted with the suspicion of Euro- 

 pean influence. Enough has already been done to give us 

 much instructive material to work upon ; and I think that the 

 direction to be taken first is to widen the field of Maori legend 

 by lifting it above locality, and by showing that most of the New 

 Zealand stories are not of New Zealand, the Tongan not of 

 Tonga, the Samoau not of Samoa, etc., etc. For this purpose 

 I will first take a fairly representative tradition, that of the 

 " Voyage of Hina to the Sacred Island, "''= leaving out those 

 portions of the story which do not perceptibly bear in any way 

 on the main body of the legend. 



" Maui had a young sister named Hinauri, who was exceed- 

 ingly beautiful ; she married Irawaru. One day Maui and his 

 brother-in-law went down to the sea to fish. Maui caught not 

 a single fish with his hook, which had no barb to it, but as long 

 as they went on fishing Maui observed that Irawaru continued 



• " Polynesian Mythology," Grey. 



