MAORI LORE.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 206, 30 August 1921, Page 2

MAORI LORE.

NEED FOR SCIENTIFIC STUDY. RECENTLY DISCOVERED j SUGGESTS MELANESIA. it is a very interesting thing indeed,! :-..nd 1 cannot hut think that it is ; iTUiine," said Mr. Elsdon Best thie ; murning concerning the carved lintel f<>::nd in a North Auckland swamp, and , nil added to the Maori collection in ■ the Auckland Museum. Mr. Best is one, ; of the best-equipped students of Maori t customs and history. For many years ] he has made a deep study of the Maori, and anything that appears over liis nameis always road with the keenest interest by the large number of people who take an interest in this sort of thing. Those I who Teapcct his knowledge and admire his terse, energetic style wish that ho would write more, and it is satisfactory to know that the Government will shortly lx> bringing out a much-needed . handbook from his pen. It ha« loag been I felt that some moderately-priced book, j giving an account of the Maori as fir as we know him and his history,, was needed, nnd Mr. Best's booklet, called j "The Maori As He wan," promises to iill this gap. Such a publication would make j the splendid collection in the Auckland Museum, for instance, doubly interest ing to tourists and colonists. Rome of the latter, it is to he fen rod, don't know . half as much as they should about the j interesting brown people who are fast passing away. Mr. Best is hi present in Auckland, and this being the lirst occasion on which he has seen the lintel he was naturally much interested in it. When it was sugkgested to him by a "Star" reporter that the wood was wonderfully well proserved he said he had had a good deal of experience of swamp-wood in his earlier days, and had frequently had proof of the remarkable preservative effect of some swamps on timber. In Germany just before the war some old wooden traps for taking animals were found. They belonged to the etone age or the bronze age, and were comparatively whole and sound when discovered. Another instance was an old canoe found at Glasgow at a depth of 25ft. In the canoe tliere was :i stone adze, so that it dated from the stone, age, but still it was in a good state of preservation. Looking at the lintel in the Auckland collection he saw no reason to believe I that it was not genuine. In that opinion j he was partly guided by the aspect of j the wood, which was similar to that of ' wood ho had seen taken out of swamps i after having lain buried for many ycaca. MELANESIA?* STRADJ. Rut the most interesting thing about the lintel was the design, which was so non-Maori. Tt resembled neither Polynesian nor Maori design. It has a closer resemblance to Melanesiau work than to Maori. Asked how he suggested it got here, Mr. IJcst said he could not say. According to an examination that had been made of the timber it was a New Zealand wood, and therefore the I work must have been of local origin. This lintel was only one of many of which we did not know the use. There were for instance the stone spools, with three, four, or five rims. They were found from the North Cape to fnvereargill. so that they must have been in general use at one time, hut to-day we had no idea of the use to which they were put. Tliere were also found in the Dominion other stone artifacts, of which we knew nothing. '•This is the interesting point about the matter." continued Mr. Tte«t. "There are a whole lot of things in New Zealand native implements and customs ai\d usage.fi that- are not Polynesian: yet we know that the Maori came from Polynesia. He is undoubtedly a Polynesian. Now take his decorative art. Tt is essentially curvilinear, never rectilinear except where the curve could not be employed, such as in reed work, or mat-making. Now the decorative art of Polynesia is rectilinear, or straight-lined. This divergence is only one of a number of cases in which the Maori seems to have changed his original views. There is no record of nny people landing in a new country and throwing away old customs and usages without .a very good reason. The Maori cither did that or lie borrowed new ones from some people he found already in possession of New Zealand when he arrived. Fn his carvings, for instance, there is it strong resemblance to Melanesian work in his patterns. There is a strain of Melnnesian in the Maori not only of blood, lint of customs nnd artifacts." DK-TATTTONK OX THE WANOAXUT. Discussing other matters Mr. Best mentioned interesting work that ha« ] been done by Mr. Johannes Andersen in the study of Maori songs and music. There is. a great deal of investigation to be done in this connection, and Mr. Rest says Mnori students must he very pleased that such a. capable, man as Mr. Andersen has taken it up. Except the short chapter in drey's Polynesian Mythology, and one or two other brief papers, very little attention has been paid to this important phase of the Maori character. Mr. Andersen and Mr. Best have now put in three summers up the Wanganui taking records of Maori songs and anything they could get. in that line. A dictaphone is rmed, and this enable* the songs to be afterwards studied at leisure and repeated over and over again for the purposes of study. SOMETHING SCIENTIFIC. In the past a lot of time has been wasted in not tackling Maori problems in a scientific manner, and for this reason Mr. Best welcomes with special warmth the work of such a keen investigator as Dr. Buck, of the Auckland office of the Department of Health. "Wo want something specific.' , said Mr. Best, and he paid a high tribute to the results Dr. Buck haA to show for his anthropomctrical investigations. Dr. Buck i« also working on Maori decorative art. Mr. Hest himself is more interci'ted in the vast etore #f information to be found in the religious beliefs, the myth-s. and the customs of the Maori. Incident ally, ho mentioned that the Maori distinguished between eon] and spirit- rather a strange Teligious concept for a race that within such a comparatively e'hort period had been canibal?.