E—No. 7

MAORI CUSTOMS. It stands as an emblem Of the taking off the tapu, An emblem of making thee common, An emblem of sprinkling thee. [Sprinkling the girl at the same time,] An emblem of Hine-angi-angi, And Hine-kori-kori, An emblem of woman. Take the tapu off; For there is the rod Of Hine-te-iwa-iwa ; It stands as from the stealing from Hawaiki; Attempt to catch the God And put him into the water ; Take off the tapu from this daughter, Immerse us then ; [Sprinkling the child with water,] Take of the tapu from Ruanuku, Take it into the water And drown it. The same ceremonies were used as in the case of the boy, in giving food to the gods, and the ancestors of the child ; the child was then presented to the people, and taken to be baptised; this rite was the same as the baptism of the boy, excepting the words, which were these:— Baptised in tho water of Tv, Be thou strong By the strength of Tv, To get food for thyself, To make clothing, To make Kaitaka mats, To welcome strangers, To carry firewood, To gather shell fish ; May the strength of Tv Be given to this daughter: The power of Kiharoa is coming To take me to the sands of Rangaunu, Where the spirits descend to the night, What know I beyond this. These Karakias are given as a specimen of the many which are used on such occasions; in fact each tribe has a somewhat different form of incantation, but the substance is the same. When a child sneezes, the mother says " sneeze, living heart;" if she were not to say so, she would suppose the child would be ill after it. To make the tooth of a child come, the mother says Growing kernel, grow, Grow, that thou mayest arrive To see the moon now full. Come thou kernel, Let the tooth ot man Be given to the rat, And the rat's tooth To the man. When a child's hair is long, and it requires to be cut for the first time, the child's grandfather or a priest must cut it: the barber then, grandfather or priest, goes from the settlement the day previous to that on which the child's hair is to be cut, to one of their sacred places, and there sleeps that night. On his leaving the settlement, the people abstain from food until the ceremony is over; in the morning the child goes to him, and when the barber observes him coming, he says Come my child, , And I will cut Each of thy hairs To the honor of Tu. ihe child's hair is cut with obsidian ; when done, the father of the child takes a Poporokai-Whiria stick to the barber, who makes a fire with it by friction, and burns the hair, repeating this Karakia: The honor thou didst seek, my son, Has come and gone. Thou wast sacred, And art common ; Thou canst return. Here I am, my son. I have risen up, I have received, I am satisfied. The barber then roasts a piece of fern root, and with it touches the boy's head and each shoulder,