MAORIANA.

Otago Witness, Issue 1973, 12 September 1889, Page 32

MAORIANA.

JOTTINGS FROM MY WANDERINGS AMONG THE MAORIS.

B muri koe ahiahi ra Tango mai to kortro o namata O nehe rawa o nga kahika.

—Ancient Poem. I think it is the jocose sagacity of Mark Twain which gives expression to the opinion that we can write and speak best on subjects we know the least about. Some may think that I am on the point of demonstrating fche correctness of this remark in an.nouncing my intention of writing upon Maori mythology, for certainly I am no Maori scholar in comparison with the men who have written so ably upon the subject. Scill, having travelled all through the North Island, visited most of the tribes, and conversed with many of the oldest and most intelligent chiefs, I have collected a good deal of information about Maori manners, legends, and history, a few scraps of which I present here for the benefit of readers interested in old New Zealand. Aboriginals. There are conflicting opinions among fche Maoris as to whether a race of men existed in the country at the time of their arrival. From this we may conclude that, providing a native race existed, it cannot have been very numerous, but must, have been confined to certain localities, which would account for the diversity of opinion, as the descendants of the Maoris who landed in parts unpopulated would not he likely to have any traditions about the aboriginals. I myself am inclined to believe in the existence of a race of native New Zealanders, and I am furbhermore inclined to believe that the mountain tribe called the Uriweras are descended from them. There is a marked physiognomical difference between members of this tribe aod the other Maoris; and Major Porter, of Gisborne, who is one of the best Maori scholars I have met with, tells me that there are words in their dialect which appear to belong to another class of languages. Again, the Uriweras have no tradition of having come from beyond the seas. " They have no canoe," as the Maoris would say. Their history begins with the flight of their ancestor Uriwera from the sea coast into the interior before an advancing enemy. The Turehu. I thought it strange that so many of the old pioneers who had spent most of their life among the Maoris had not heard anything about the Turehus until I mentioned the matter to them in the hope of getting some further information. It was by accident that I got possession of the word which led to so many interesting narratives. I was going from Whangaroa to Kae in the Bay of Islands one foggy morning in company with several Maoris, one of whom exclaimed, " 1 should not be surprised if there were Turehus about this morning." This caused me to inquire into the nature of these Turehus, and from every tribe I visited I collected some additional information about them. Stated in brief, the Turehus, according to Maori legend^, are a race of small hairy men who live in the highest mountains, but during foggy mornings they make their way down to the' sea for the purpose of fishing, and retreat to the mountains before the fog has cleared off. It was from the Turehus that the Maoris first learned to make fishing nets. One morning in the mystical long-ago a party of Maoris surprised some Turehus on the beach near Mongonui.- The latter ran away, leaving their net full of fish on the beach, and from this pattern the Maoris learned to make similar nets. The Turehus were women-snatchers. They would watch for the men's departure, when they would make a raid upon the huts and carry away one or two of the weakest women. However, sometimes; they succeeded in captur-

Ing the womens' affections without violent means. Some girls, and even married women,- were supposed to have Turehu lover's* Albinos, which, though rare among the Maoris, are yet occasionally met with, are supposed to be the offspring of Maori women and Turehus, and are as such treated with a certain amount of superstitious awe, as . . < " Nova progenies coelo dimittitwr alto." It is now the general belief among the Maoris that the Turehus are nearly extinct, though I have known two old men who declared that they had seen them, and several who told sue that they had often heard them jabbering 4n their strange language during foggy mornings. What hss given rise to these legends ? Do they point back to an aboriginal race ? The story of the fishing neb isjagainsb such a supposition. The most probable explanation I can think of is that at a very early time in Maori history a party of castaway sailors landed on the coast, and from fear of the Natives made themselves a home up in the mountains.

A Pagan

Occasionally one meets with a pagan of the old school, who, like a dusky Julian with his face turned to the Past, lives in the timeconsecrated order of old institutions. When at Gisborne we pulled up the river as far as we could get. On the bank where we made fast our canoe was a rush-hub inhabited by a solitary, somewhat aristocratically-tattooed Maori. He was Very old — fairly bent like a bow with age. At first he wag very taciturn, but a stick of tobacco and a clay pipe made him more communicative. During our conversation we asked him if he knew the 13ible. No ; btit he had heard something aboub Moses and tho Mormons. Did he know anything about the white men's religion 7 Yes ; he had beard that when the white men died they went to a place where there was a big fire. Needless to say that the Christianity of the Maoris is a peculiar kind of mixture of Bibld doctrine with old pagan superstitions. Even Cbe most devout retain belief in witchcraft, ghost, charms, and incantations. ' \

Language

It seems to me that the Maori language shows traces of an Ayrian origin. The dual forms of the personal pronouns, and the optative mood of the verb are features in which it resembles the Greek. In tho Greek the preposition hina takes the optative or the subjunctive mood. In the Maori Ida marks the optative mood. Certainly in seeking for aimilarities to Ayrian words we must be careful that the words we fix upon are real Maori words, or else we may make the same mistake as a writer who proved the identity of the word taipo (devil) with the ancient Egyptian word typhon. Unfortunately for the theory taipo is not a Maori word at all. It is not in the classical tongue, but appears only after intercourse with the Europeans. How it got into the Maori vocabulary is nob easy to tell. Perhaps some German or Dutch whalers first gave them an idea of the Prince of Evil, the name of whom in these languages is teut'el, and which in Maori rendering would be likely to become t aipo. There are, however, some Maori words which have the same meaning as the ancient Egyptian words, such as ra, haibi, ngutu.

Ghosts-

It is well known that the Maoris believe in a future life before contact with Europeans. When a man died it v>as supposed that his spirit proceeded to the northernmost point of the North Island — Capo Reinga — from which it plunged into the sea, and landed in Hades. Though converted to Christianity, the Maoris still hold to the belief in the "spirit's leap." " I have often heard," said an old Maori from Parengarenga to me, " I have often heard the voices of the spirits rushing past me. They generally come in crowds, some singing, others wailing, others again cursing." The priest had power to call the spirits back by means of incantations, and the spiritualistic seeance had its prototype among the Maoris long before the era of Kate Fox, Judge Manning, in his book, gives a very striking incident of such a sceance ; and from those who knew the judge well I learned that he believed that there was something above explanation in Maori necromancy. Major Porter, to whom I owe mush of my knowledge of Maori mythology, told me of a seance he had with a very old priest. On that occasion the supposed spirit manifested itself by a noise similar to what might have been produced by a bird fluttering round the room. None were present but the major and the old priest. The fluttering sound continued for some time. Oswald E. Hugo.