"CAT'S CRADLE."

Otago Witness, Issue 2730, 11 July 1906, Page 39

"CAT'S CRADLE."

INFLUENCE ON THE MAORI

lFboh Our Own CoaaESPONDENT.) LONDON, May 11. A most interesting article on Cat's Uradle, written by Andrew Lang, appears in the Morning Post to-day. It starts with the following preface: — "Deep meanng lieth oft in childish nlay, but. though .here are volumes of meaning in the game >f Cat's Cradle, the significance seems to

i have been added by way of afterthought. i First, people played with an endless piece |of string. Being in the savage condition they had abundance of leisure so soon as I the daily deer or fish or kangaroo had I been provided. Having no business, early | man had plenty of time on his hands. i He appears to have devoted it to invent- ; ing stories, elaborating a maze of mari riage laws, evolving new figures in Cat's ■ Cradle, and singing songs about them. Satan had clearly run out of mischievous ! ideas, and could ' find no mischief still for idle hands to do ' when early man,

left uninspired by the Evil One, developed such an innocent form of ingenious indolence as Cat's Cradle."

Ihe article goes on to say: — ihe game occurs in Fiji, where Buchner suggests that it was taught by the missionaries to the natives. But all such things are independently evolved. The early missionaries found among Fijian riddles the famous enigma of the Sphinx, which need not have puzzled the Thebans so terribly. In the Polynesian Islands, from Hawaii to New Zealand and the Harvey group, an identical set of figures prevails. Here

the figures record the ancient mytholojn of the race, the various adventures of their Prometheus. Maui, and the story of the rat which saved mortals from star\ation wh n n an unfriendly god collected all the food in the world and hung- it up to the sky in a net. Whether religious instruction might here be imparted through Cat's Cradle, as among the Maoris, is a question for legislators, but the practice works well in New Zealand, the string figures sur>'->ly-ing a memoria technica. This is, perhaps, the most serious purpose to which Cat's Cradle has ever been adapted. But

it cannot haie been indented as a record; the figures, when once evolved;' have merely been named after- Wythologicali incidents,, such as Mother Night, bringing forth her family, Maru with the gods, ana! Maui fishing up New Zealand from the sea. with the barbed fish-hook of which hewas the inventor. Indeed. Maui is said to have invented Cat's Cradle: there isnothing that this genius did not invent, Songs of appropriate significance, hymns, perhaps, are sung as the figures aredeveloped, and, on the whole, New Zealand is the sacred isle of the game."