MAUI'S FISHING

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 7, 8 July 1922, Page 12

MAUI'S FISHING

AND A MYTH OF TONGA-TABU.

The Maori myth that tho North Island. »f New Zealand was a huge fish which the god Maui pulled up out of the sea is not exclusively the property of the Maoris, and a book recently reviewed iby the London Times contained a refer•ence to Tahiti as follows:

"Tahiti is an island, about the size of /Middlesex, fished up in the first grey bJS^ ginning of all things from the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a mother-o'-pearl ihook by, some three-fingered god of the "Polynesians."

--Admiral Cyprian A. G. Bridge transfers, the reference to another island, and incidentally provides a further entertaining morsel of ancient lore.

The quoted statement some years ago would have been, and perhaps still would-be, disputed by the Tongans, he writes.^ Near the anchorage off Nukua-; lofa.'in Tonga-Tabu, there is a small island which the then Crown Prince, grandson of the great King George Tubou, told me was the first larid in the porld.;-. It had been fished up from the Bottom of the sea by the god Maui. This divinity put a man on the island, andi planted a yam on it to provide- food for: the man. The devil came and yprooted the yam. The god then planted a coconut tree. The devil uprooted this tree. Hie god next tried planting a sweet potato. The devil did with this what ho bad done with the yam and the tree, the god, losing all "patience, decided to arcumvent the adversary. He put a woman on the island, remarking that he would by this give the devil so much to Jo that he would have to leave plantations alone. That was exactly as things turned out. ,The devil was made so busy by the new inhabitant of the island that he had no time to interfere with vcge- : table production, 'which since then has: Snereased satisfactorily. A ..'.-,