particular were spoken of as ‘winter nights' tales.’

The Maui Myth A short extract, literally translated from an early manuscript, will illustrate the nature of these stories. The incident described is the last exploit of Maui, his unsuccessful attempt to pass through the body of the Goddess of the Underworld. Maui's father said to him, ‘My son, I know that you are a bold fellow, and that you have achieved many things. But I fear that there is one who will defeat you.’ ‘And who might that be?’ said Maui. ‘Your ancestress, the Goddess of the Underworld.’ ‘Is her strength that of the sun?’ asked Maui. ‘I trapped him, and beat him and sent him on his way. Is he greater than the sea, which is greater than the land? Yet I dragged land from it. Now then let me seek life or death.’ The father replied, ‘You are right, my last born, and the strength of my old age. Go then, seek your ancestress, who lives at the edge of the sky.’ ‘What does she look like? asked Maui. ‘The red glow of the western sky emanates from her,’ said the father. ‘Her body is that of a human being, but her eyes are greenstone, her hair is sea-kelp, and her mouth is that of a barracouta.’ Maui took with him the smallest birds of the forest and set off towards the west. They found the Goddess of the Underworld lying asleep, with her legs apart, and they could see sharp flints of greenstone and obsidian set between her thighs. Maui said to his companions, ‘When I enter the body of this old woman, don't laugh. But wait until I reappear again from her mouth. Then you may laugh all you like.’ ‘You will be killed,’ was all the birds could say. ‘If you laugh too soon I will be killed,’ said Maui. ‘But if I can pass right through her body I shall live, and she will be the one to die.’ He prepared himself, winding the cord of his battle-club firmly round his waist, and casting aside his garment. Behold his skin, mottled like that of a mackerel with the black pigment of the many toothed tattooing-chisel! As Maui began his task the cheeks of the watching birds puckered with suppressed mirth. His head and shoulders had disappeared when the fantail could hold back no longer, and burst into laughter. The old woman awoke, opened her eyes, closed her legs, and cut Maui completely in two. Now Maui was the first man to die, and because he failed in his self-appointed task, all men are mortal. And the Goddess retains her position at the entrance to the spirit-world.

The Tribal Traditions Traditions are concerned with mortals, not with the gods and heroes of the myths. They are genealogically placed not more than thirty generations from the present, and knowledge of them is usually quite local. Maori traditions, for example, are not known outside of New Zealand. The earliest Maori traditions concern the discovery and settlement of this country. The earliest recorded version of such a tradition was told to the missionary Hamlin at Orua Bay, on the south shore of the Manukau Harbour, in 1842. Hamlin published the story in, of all places, the ‘Tasmanian Journal of Science and Technology’. It is an account of the arrival of the Tainui canoe, in essentially the same form that it would be told by an elder of the Tainui tribes today. By the late 1840's (as I have already mentioned), literate Maoris, realising that the decline of the indigenous culture was inevitable, were themselves recording what they knew of the old beliefs. We are indebted to John White, who collected much of this material in his ‘Ancient History of the Maori’, a magnificent six-volume collection, now unfortunately out of print and prized by book collectors, who will pay forty pounds for a set. The migration and settlement traditions are thought by many people, including, I believe, everyone who has worked intensively with them, to have much historical value. The wide distribution of much of the mythology is conclusive proof that Polynesians were able to preserve legendary material for many centuries. So it is not unreasonable to suppose that settlement traditions, genealogically dated at only five or six hundred years ago, and of obvious functional importance in the social and political organisation of the people, were maintained with equal fidelity, and reflect actual events. In the case of those whose organisation was not completely shattered by the inter-tribal and inter-racial wars that succeeded colonisation, continuous traditional records have been recorded, told in terms of great men and great