POLYNESIAN MYTHOLOGY
NOTES

1 If a child was born before its time, and thus perished without having known the joys and pleasures of life, it was carefully buried with peculiar incantations and ceremonies; because if cast into the water, or carelessly thrown aside, it became a malicious being or spirit, actuated by a peculiar antipathy to the human race, who it spitefully persecuted, from having been itself deprived of happiness which they enjoyed. All their malicious deities had an origin of this kind.

2 The manapau was a species of tree peculiar to the country from whence the people came, where the priests say it was known by that name.

3 This quarrel of Maui with his brother-in-law, Irawaru, is sometimes narrated in this way:

Maui and his brother-in-law had been paying a visit to the people of a village not very distant from where they lived; when they were about to return home again, Maui asked his brother-in-law to carry a little provision for them both upon their short journey, but Irawaru answered surlily: 'What should I carry any provision for, indeed? why I have just had an excellent meal': they then started, and Maui, who was very angry, by his enchantments drew out the earth as they proceeded, so as to lengthen exceedingly the road they had to traverse; at last, being both overcome by hunger and fatigue, they sat down to rest, and Maui, who knew what his intentions were before they started, and had brought provisions with him, ate a good meal, but gave none to his brother-in-law. He then, to throw Irawaru off his guard, asked him to clean and dress his hair for him, and laid his head on his lap for that purpose; when his own was finished he offered to do the same for Irawaru, who suspecting no harm laid his head on Maui's lap, who threw him into an enchanted sleep, and then by his enchantments changed him into a dog.

4 Inhabitants of New Zealand.

5 The Maoris say that the 'Kanae', or salmon, had come on shore with the Ponaturi, and escaped out of the house by its power of leaping, gaining the water again by successive springs.

6 According to some traditions her name was Hapai.

7 The European reader cannot at all enter into the witty nature of this adventure in the estimation of a Maori; the idea of a sacred chief of high rank being by mistake treated as a common slave, conveys impressions to their minds of which we can form no accurate notion.

8 Tawhaki is said to still dwell in the skies, and is worshipped as a god, and thunder and lightning are said to be caused by his footsteps when he moves.

9 See.

10 The part of the tradition which relates to the death of Kaitangata is considerably shortened in the translation, as not being likely to interest the European reader

11 New Zealand flax.

12 Green jasper.

13 Obsidian, with which the natives grind down the jasper.

14 The Maoris have another name for this whirlpool; they call it 'the steep descent where the world ends.'

15 Whanga-Paraoa, the bay of the sperm whale, so called from the whale found there.

16 Kai Motiti koe e noho ana, 'I suppose you are at Motiti, as you can find no firewood.'

17 The fishing bank of Taikehu.

18 Apterix australis.

19 A sharp instrument of war made of stone.

20 The discovery of a plot by guessing the meaning of a song which persons were overhead singing was a common circumstance with all the races and throughout all the islands of the Pacific; for instance, in Pitcairn's Island, when first occupied by part of the crew of The Bounty and some Tahitian men and women, we find:

'Brown and Christian were very intimate, and their two wives overhead one night Williams's second wife sing a song. Why should the Tahitian men sharpen their axes to cut off the Englishmen's heads? The wives of Brown and Christian told their husbands what Williams's second wife had been singing; when Christian heard of it, he went by himself with his gun to the house where all the Tahitian men were assembled; he pointed his gun at them, but it missed fire. Two of the natives ran away into the bush.'—Pitcairn's island and the Islander.

21 They show several spots upon the east coast where Kupe touched with his canoes; but I have not yet had time to arrange and transcribe the various traditions connected with his landing at those places.—G. G. It will be seen that they did not follow Kupe's directions, thinking that he was deceiving them, he being probably friendly to Uenuku.

22 Te Wherowhero did not remember the whole song, but that this was the concluding verse; it was probably in allusion to their coming to peep at Te Kanawa.

23 This legend was not given in the original English 1855 version of the text, but was included in the 1854 Maori edition. The translation is by W.W. Bird.

24 Cicero.

25 Cicero, Orat.

26 Ptolomæus the Magian, Mr. Vincent's paper in Notices et Extraits des MSS., tom. xvi, Paris.

27 Smith.

28 Burney.

29 De Poematum Cantu.

30 That the enharmonic has no foundation in nature is false, for what tree tapers 'per saltum?'—'what river flows in heaps?—this gradation is nature's life-stream; the other scales may be compared to the proportional parts, the enharmonic to the continuous procession.

31 Lane's Modern Egypt.

32 Lay Tradescant's Chinese as they Are.

33 Notices et Extraits des MSS., tom. xvi.

34 Memoire de la Societe Royale de Lille.

35 Περ Μουσικσ {Greek Perì Mousikhs}.

36 Burney, vol. i.

37 As the soft diatonic, the hemiolion chromatic, the soft chromatic.

38 Lay Tradescant's Chinese as they Are.

39 Author of the Papers on the Rhythm of the Ancient Greek Orators of the Psalms, Selah, the Evil Eye, read before the Royal Society Of Literature; and of Papers on Accent and Quantity, discovering their true and real difference, from authentic sources. See English Journal of education, February, March, April, June, July, and August; G. Bell, 186, Fleet Street.

40 The pages refer to Sir George Grey's collection of New Zealand Songs, Mau Konga moteatea, me nga Haki rara.