136 



♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



[AriiiL 2, 1888. 



and tapu,* and the songs and proverbs of his people," the 

 text being given as well as the translation. 



Such were the themes on which, sitting under a shady 

 tree, the priests of the okl faith discoursed to Mr. White, 

 daring " to disclose some of their sacred lore," but leaving 

 blanks now and then which no logic or persuasion could 

 induce them to fill. " The parts I have not related," said 

 one, " are so sacred that I withhold them in dread of 

 sudden death." " I cannot give some of our sacred history," 

 said another, "as not an old priest now remains alive who 

 has the power to perform the ceremonies to save me from 

 the penalty of divulging the sacred words of the gods." The 

 extreme care with which the ancient legends were guarded so 

 as to secure their unimpaired transmission, the existence of an 

 hereditary caste which was the vehicle of the sacred oracles, 

 are among the many evidences of a highly-organised social 

 state, which, however, existed side by side with insatiate 

 cannibalism. The chapter in which Mr. White describes 

 the Whare-Kura, or sacred school in which the eldest sons 

 of the priests were taught mythology and history, as also 

 the rites and incantations of the craft, is full of interest. 

 Besides this school of divinity, there were schools of 

 astronomy, in which the .study of omens to be drawn from 

 the movements of the heavenly bodies was practised, and 

 schools of agriculture and manufactures, all of which were 

 open to every class. In the Taki-Tumu traditions, which 

 this volume embraces, Maui, the great culture-hero, the 

 ancestral fisherman who in many a Polynesian myth 

 hooks >ip the islands from the ocean, is by no means 

 ])vominent. We have details of the descendants of poly- 

 gamous gods which rival the genealogical chapters of 

 Scripture in their dryness ; but these are followed by many 

 variants of the wide-spread myth of the separation of earth 

 and sky, the substance of which, old at its base but new in 

 much of its super.structure, is as follows. Eangi (heaven) 

 and Papa (earth) were lying together, and all between them 

 were vines and creepers, tender plants, and red water. All 

 was dark, and their children were born therein, but having 

 seen a glimmer of light in the armpit of Rangi, they re- 

 solved to separate their parents. However much the myths 

 ditfer in detail, they agree in assigning this task to Tane. 

 Having sundered apart his fiither and mother, he propped 

 up his father, but not liking to see the nakedness of the 

 pair, he caught stars and threw them heavenward " to 

 beautify Rangi, that he might be comely," and then went 

 sunwards to bring trees and plants wherewith to clothe 

 Papa. But the love of the parted ones was unabated ; the 

 tears of Papa are carried to Rangi as mist and dew, and the 

 sighs of Rangi are borne on the west wind to Papa, 

 " tickling his ears " ; in another myth " he sighs for her in 

 the winter, and this is the origin of ice." The dualism of 

 Christian and other theologies peeps out in the myth that 

 after Tane went to heaven, Tu and Eoko destroyed the 

 ci'eatures which he had gatheied for food, and then, follow- 

 ing him, fought a battle on the borders of heaven, when 

 Tu was slain and Eoko cast down, like Satan and his 

 wicked angels. And passibly we have some mixture of 

 Eastern and Oceanian legend in the creation of man out of 

 red clay, and of woman from a sloppy mixture which Tane 

 makes in human shape, and then infuses life into it by processes 

 which cannot well be detailed here. Neither are the tradi- 

 tions without a deluge, which Ta-whaki caused by stamping on 

 the floor of the heaven until it cracked, when torrents of water 

 flowed down and covered the earth. When he died, the 



* I.e. tabu, or taboo, as we commonly spell it, signifying the 

 setting of something apart from human contact, itvesting it with 

 an inviolate or sacred character. We have given the word another 

 meaning, applying it to forbidden subjects, as " tabooing " a 

 conversation. 



green parrots took some of his blood and stained their 

 feathers with it, hence the red colour of those birds to this 

 day. Parallels and resemblances are not evidence of 

 borrowings ; the same explanations of like ])henomena are 

 often given by races at corresponding levels of culture. 

 But, in the cases before us, we know how probable it is that 

 alien elements have been assimilated, or that they have 

 become confused with indigenous elements in the minds of 

 chiefs who, as Mr. White remarks, " would have given the 

 whole Maori hi.story," both true and legendary, " but, 

 unfortunately for us, these men were born too late ; that is, 

 their education began after the Whare-Kura and its rites 

 had been neglected." 



The lament or incantation which heads each chapter 

 evidences not only the grace and fulness of the Maori 

 language as a vehicle of poetic feeling, but also the truly 

 astounding aptitude of the Maori mind for abstract thought. 

 Remembering that the idea of a Supreme Being did not 

 exist among the tribes, we, however, need very satisfactory 

 proof that the subtle speculations embodied in the theory 

 of Aeons, beginning with the age of thought and ending 

 with the age of gods and men, and that such definitions as 

 those which are given in this volume, e.g. of Tua as mean- 

 ing " Behind all matter," and " Behind that which is most 

 distant," are the genuine equivalents of Maori thought, and 

 not the unconscious gloss of philosophic interpreters. How 

 easy it is to make a serious mistake in the New Zealand 

 tongue the following story, which is cited from Mr. Buller's 

 work, shows : — 



I knew a missionary who, in the early days, had a lesson in 

 Maori in not the most pleasant way. It was expedient to give an 

 occasional present to the chiefs in order to secure their good offices, 

 for the lives of missionaries and their families hung upon their 

 caprice. One day the said missionarj' was giving a small three- 

 legged iron pot to an old chieftain, who, instead of being pleased 

 with it, flew into a great rage, much to the surprise, and somewhat 

 to the terror, of the donor. The cause of this was, he had said, 

 " Mou tenei," whereas he ought to have said, " ilau tenei." Both 

 phrases have, in English, the same meaning, " This is for you ; " 

 but, in M.iori, there was an important distinction. By the latter 

 form he would have been understood to say, " This is an iron pot 

 for you to do with as you please;" but, by the unfortunate, but 

 ignorant use of the other form, he was heard to say — what he never 

 Intended to say — " This is an iron pot for you 1o he cookfd in." 

 Hence the fury of the insulted chief. 



ROYAL VICTORIA HALL. 



{To the Editor o/ Knowledge.) 



LECTRIC BELLS " formed the subject of 

 a very interesting lecture given at this 

 hall on Tuesday last by Prof Sylvanus 

 Thompson, who, instead of travelling 

 hurriedly over a large space of ground, 

 confined himself to explaining thoroughly 

 and clearly this small department of 

 electric science. 



Ringing one of the many hells displayed on the stage, he 

 inquired where the power was to be found which rang the 

 bell 1 Imagine an intelligent savage investigating one of 

 our common house-bells, with a crank to convert a per- 

 pendicular into a horizontal pull, tracing back the wires till 

 he found the man at the other end pulling them. In like 

 manner we must trace out the less obvious force at work 

 in the ringing of an electric bell. It is no case of pulling, 

 for the wires hang slack. We find one of the wires is con- 

 nected with two bobbins of coiled wire, which, when the bell 

 is ringing, constantly pull and let go a jiiece of iron connected 

 with the clapper of the bell. The other wire is connected 

 with thLs piece of iron, passes thence to an electric battery, 



