1920.] 
Andersen. — Maori String Games. 
85 
it contains a great many examples, with full descriptions of the figures, 
and good illustrative diagrams not only of the completed figures, hut of 
intermediate stages during the process of working them out. An intro¬ 
duction by Dr. Alfred C. Haddon gives details of the games as known in 
various countries. He writes : “As a child I had played cat’s-cradle and 
had seen various string tricks, but it was not until the year 1888 that I saw 
in Torres Straits some of those elaborate string figures of savage peoples 
that put our humble efforts to shame. I found that a couple of natives do 
not play together as we do, ‘ taking off 5 from each other, but that each 
plays separately, though in exceptional cases two players may be required 
to construct a particular figure. They can make much more intricate 
devices than ours, and the manipulation is correspondingly complicated, 
toes and teeth being at times pressed into service.” 
He makes more interesting remarks concerning two main types of the 
figures : “ On making a general survey of string figures, or, to adopt the 
English colloquial term, 4 cat’s-cradles, ’ it seems that they fall into two main 
groups ; but as our knowledge increases we may find that this generaliza¬ 
tion will have to be somewhat modified. In the European and Asiatic type 
two strings pass around the back of each hand, and the crossing loops are 
taken up by the middle fingers. In the Oceanic and American type there 
are no strings at the back of the hand, and the crossing loops are taken 
up by the indices. The former invariably requires two players, while one 
person suffices for the usual figures of the latter type. I propose to designate 
these two types as the Asiatic and Oceanic respectively.” 
He then deals briefly with the games as played in Asia, the East Indian 
Archipelago, Europe, and in Australia, New Guinea, Melanesia, Polynesia, 
America. In order to be able to record the many different movements 
producing the various figures, he, in conjunction with Dr. W. H. It. Rivers, 
invented a nomenclature which he and some others following him have 
used ; but its technical nature is somewhat of an obstacle, and a much 
simpler and equally effective nomenclature has been used by Mrs. Jayne 
in the book under discussion. 
Besides describing the making of a great many figures—the illustrations 
to which number nearl}^ one thousand—Mrs. Jayne reproduces a large 
number of figures that are known only from the finished patterns. Her 
book is a most valuable text-book on the art of making string figures. 
In 1912 Miss Kathleen Haddon published Cat’s-cradles in Many Lands , 
a volume which contains many of the figures given by Mrs. Jayne, and 
others in addition. In this book the scientific nomenclature invented by 
Drs. Haddon and Rivers is used. 
Each of these books contains an excellent bibliography on the subject of 
string games, and but for their existence none of the comparisons made 
between Maori string games and those of other lands would have been 
possible. 
At the hui aroha held outside Gisborne in April of this year (1919) 
a few Maori patterns were learnt by the writer of this paper, and it is as 
an introduction to these that the foregoing notes have been put together, 
Mr. Elsdon Best supplying the whole of the Maori material. It may be noted 
that comparatively few of the Maoris were able to give any information 
about the games, and very few were able to make the figures. Only one 
was learnt from the children ; the others were learnt from grown men ; 
and it was remarkable that, as the days went on, more and more were called 
to mind, as though ordinarily the games were quite disregarded. They 
