392 / ransactions. — Miscellaneous. 



But the choice of this form for a deity or demi-god, especially 

 in the fire-gaining story, goes deeper still : — 



(Egypt.) — "The spirits wore the forms of human-headed 

 birds. The bird was an emblem of breath, or soul. The 

 breath was the mover to and fro in the body ; and in death, its 

 types — the bird and the feather — were clung to as emblematical 

 of the spirit. . . . The dove was retained in Israel as the 

 bird of breath, the type of the soul. In the Osirian cult, the 

 hawk was the symbol of the soul. The sun was depicted with 

 the hawk-head, but in the 12th chapter of the ' Metamorphoses,' 

 Ritual 76-88, the turtle-dove is one of the types into which 

 Osiris, the deceased, makes his transformation."* 



I think it, therefore, by no means a mere story-teller's fancy 

 that gave to Maui first the dove-shape, then that of the " hawk 

 of soul," or fire. 



That certain trees should have been selected by the Poly- 

 nesians (differing in each legend according to the vegetable 

 growth of the locality) as those into which " the seed of fire" 

 was placed by Maui, is but natural ; it would not escape the 

 observation of the shrewd natives that certain kinds of timber 

 were more inflammable than others. But the expression " seed 

 of tire" is remarkable as being an idiom preserved among 



palumba, or palumbe, if placed beside columba, does not show that the 

 original part of each word is lumba (pa-lumba, co-lumba). In Aryan lan- 

 guages m and p, or m and v, or m and b, interchange continually : the Celtic 

 mor and vor, " great ;" Welsh moel and foel, " a hill ;" Irish mean and bean, 

 " a woman ;" Latin tumeo and tubeo, glomus and globus : as familiar exam- 

 ples in English, Molly and Polly, Meg and Peg. But this interchange 

 points to a probable indistinct, primitive, double consonant mb or mp : 

 sounds so often found in simple languages, where, instead of getting distinct 

 letter-sounds, we have highly complicated ones, like the Hottentot clicks, 

 etc., the tch, ng, mb, etc. The Fijians (Melanesians) have this ancient com- 

 pound consouant mb ; every b is mb; thus the word we write Ban is pro- 

 nounced Mbau, Bulotu is Mbulotu, etc. In the Polynesian dialects the m 

 and v or m and p constantly interchange (mavete, wewete : mafao, fafao; 

 malemo, paremo ; milo, wilo, etc.), though they cannot say mb. If. in the 

 case of the " dove " word, the Latin has kept this ancient consonant, then 

 pa-lumbe and eo-lumbu become pn-lube and co-luba : this lube equalling the 

 Tongan lube, the Samoan lupe, the Tahitian rape, i.e. "pigeon." It. on the 

 other hand, this derivation or comparison is not upheld on further investi- 

 gation ; should it be made certain that columba means " the diver," as 

 Kokvjipaui [palumba remaining unaccounted for), then this side of the 

 meaning shows itself also in the Maori languages. The German taube, " a 

 dove," witli its meaning "to dive and duck the head," (See Kluge, "Etymo- 

 logisches Wdrterbuch, ") is in Maori taupe, " to bend down," "bending the 

 head," variable ; in Tahitian, taupe, "to bend down," applied to the head ; 

 in Tongan, taube, " to bend down;" in Samoan, taupe, "to swing." Ami 

 this meaning of swinging, bowing or bending the bead, is plainly connected 

 with the lube (rupe) pigeon-word ; for while in Tongan lulu' means " pigeon," 

 lubelube is " to swing, or swag," as in carrying anything along. 



*"Book of the Beginnings," Massey, vol. ii., pp. 92, 93. See also 

 former paper, " 1'olynesian Alphabets," Tregeai (p. 353, mile). 



