MANA OF MATARIKI.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 43, 20 February 1935, Page 6

MANA OF MATARIKI.

POETIC LORE OF THE PLEIADES.

(By J.C.)

"All would he well if you were leaving us under the benign influence of the Paki-o-Matariki (the Pleiades), which diffuses peace and contentment." This passage from the Waikato Maoris' farewell to the GovernorGeneral at Ngaruawahia lately opens up a little treasury of native poetry and mythology, history and astronomical lore. Like many expressions in Maori ceremonial speech on occasions of this kind, it leaves much to be explained. Lord and Lady Blcdisloc, who have won the hearts of the people by their interest in all things Maori, are leaving New Zealand at a time when economic adversity afllicts the Maori as well as the pakcha; that is the meaning of the passage; all is not serenity and contentment. Yet this is the season of the year when the constellation of the Pleiades is high in the heavens. You may see those stars, the most famous in classic story, in the northern sky these night's, the seven "dancing Daughters of Atlas," which the Maori calls Matariki, or Little Eyes. The "silver braid" of Tennyson, the glimmering powdery nebulae which surrounds the stars, is the Maori "pura-pura-whetu," or "star seed," as pretty and as astronomically correct a description as one could desire. These nebulae literally are the mysterious cobweb of gases which in course of ages may be whirled into form as stars. There is a design called "purapura-whetu" in the lattice-like panels in black and white which adorn the interior of carved houses; it is a series of small crosses, or "x's."

"Te Paki o Matariki" literally means the fine weather sign of the Pleiades; it refers to halcyon days, a season of calm and quiet and gentleness, when all Nature is pleasant and when mankind is happy and peaceful. But while the stars are propitious, "shedding sweet influence," man is troubled; all is not well with him. However, there is consolation in the fact that the honoured Governor-General will still hold the Maori people in sympathetic remembrance and that he will continue when in England to further the interest of the race. So runs the Maori thought. The Paki-o-Matariki will yet reign benevolently over the land. There were similar figurative references to the mystic mana of the Pleiades in the poetic addresses to Sir George Grey when he was leaving Xcw Zealand in 1803.

A note to one of Ralph Hodgson's poems in a collection of modern lyrics explains the lines: ". . . Flocks of shiny pleiades

Among the plums and apple trees Sing in tho summer day." Greek poets thought of the stars of the Pleiades (literally "the sailers") as "peliades,". i.e., doves, and invented myths to account for the name. It was by the rising and setting of the Pleiades, according to classic history, that Creek navigators anciently fixed their times for voyaging.

The same thing may bo said of the MaoriPolynesians. The old tradition tellers of the Waikato said that the voyage of the Tainui from Hawaiki to New Zealand was made after Matariki appeared for the summer, and those kindly stars nightly watched over the crewafloat on the vast ocean until they reached these shores, in the day Uenuku, the god whose visible form is the rainbow, at times appeared to cheer the Polynesian sailors' hearts. These heavenly signs the Pleiades and the rainbow are honoured to-day by Waikatos on their flags and in other decorative symbols. In Tawhiao's. and Mahuta's time there was a Kingite newspaper called "Te Paki o Matariki," with a pictorial headpiece which showed the seven stars of the Pleiades surmounting carved figures representing the ancient gods. Matariki of the Maoris is linked up by a curious series of mythological beliefs with the Pleiades lore of many lands besides the isles of Greece. In the Polynesian Islands there are legends which equally with the Greeks associate the return of the Pleiades with voyaging and with favourable conditions of life. There is a Pleiades of islands on our Auckland coast. When Captain Cook gave the present chart name to the rocky islands of Taranga and the Marotiri group, I believe he had in mind the old English North Country sailors' name for the Pleiades, "The Hen and Chickens." Old Patara Te Tuhi (that benevolent tattooed patriarch who was the subject of some of Mr. C. F. Goldie's famous paintings) told me that when King Tawhiao felt his death approaching he rose, and, standing in front of his house at Parawera. made oracular utterance in these words, translated: "The lightning flashes, the thunder crashes; the Pleiades shine above us yonder; the Rainbowgod appears; Mahuta is the King." In these words the old king proclaimed his son as his successor, under the sacred and benign auspices of the tribal gods.