﻿W. T. L. Travers, — Traditions of the New Zealanders. 53 



for appearances after tlie real meaning of the appearances is lost. In this 

 way, too, a vast number of old monuments, and a still greater number of the 

 names of places, come to have grandam tales of the most absui'd kind con- 

 nected with them, as the history of their origin. There is, says the same 

 writer, in the Greyfriars' Churchyard in Edinburgh, a mausoleum, composed of 

 a recumbent female figure, with a pillar-supported canopy over her, on which 

 stand four female figures at the several corners. The popular story is, that 

 the recumbent lady was poisoned by her four daughters, whose statues were 

 placed over her in eternal remembi-ance of their wickedness ; the fact being 

 that the four figures are those of Faith, Charity, etc. — favourite emblematical 

 characters in the age when the monument was erected, and the object in 

 placing them there was purely ornamental." But where intrinsic presumptions 

 can fairly be raised against the truth of a narrative, however plausible it may 

 be on a cursory view, we are entitled to require that it be supported by some 

 independent and positive testimony, which shall raise it to the undoubted dignity 

 of a truth. In this, however, lies the chief difiiculty in dealing with the case 

 of Ti-aditions of the class now under consideration ■ for, it being manifestly 

 impossible to support them by any positive testimony, we must be content to 

 arrive at an estimate of their vahxe, for historical purposes, by a careful and 

 reasonable criticism, and then to accept them as narratives of fact in pro- 

 portion, but in strict proportion only, to the probabilities by which they can 

 be supported. 



Under any circumstances, indeed, the origin and history of a savage race, 

 possessing neither written nor pictorial records, must be a difiicult subject to 

 deal with, but more especially so when the race in question has, for some 

 period of xmknown duration, occupied a position of quasi-isolation from the 

 rest of mankind. Those who have attempted to investigate the origin and 

 history of the races which occupied Western Europe before the Roman conquests, 

 have experienced and commented upon this kind of difiiculty, and have found 

 it impossible to arrive at any conclusions which can be treated as demonstrable, 

 notwithstanding the material assistance derived from the accounts of ancient 

 writers, the examination of monuments of various kinds, and the careful 

 analyses which, of late years, have been made of the languages spoken by the 

 descendants of those i-aces. They have been obliged, iji effect, to adopt a 

 course very similar to that which I propose to follow in the present inquiry, 

 and have ultimately accepted such only of the Traditions still extant, relating 

 to the races in question, as do not conflict with probabilities still ascertainable. 

 In this connection it must be manifest that the term "Tradition," apjjlied to 

 narratives of the class under review, at all events when presented to us in tlie 

 character of historical tales, ought to have some definite meaning, and I shall 

 assume that, for the purposes of criticism, they must be provisionally accepted 



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