GREY AND SHORTLAND ON NEW ZEALAND MYTHOLOGY AND TRADITIONS. * THESE

two volumes are the result of official opportunity and the responsibility it creates, especially in minds that have a natural bias in favour of the aborigines of a barbarous country. Sir Charles Grey as the Governor of New Zealand, Dr. Shortland as a Political Agent or Protector of Aborigines, both felt that they could not efficiently discharge their duties without a knowledge of the language and traditions of the natives. The information they acquired in the course of their duties has been published by each officer at intervals of a few months between the appearance of the respective books.

The subject of both publications is very similar. It primarily consiste,of the mythology, traditions, and superstitions of the New Zealardters; and to this extent the matter in both has a substantial resemblance. The differences when the subjects are alike are those of circumstances and detail, arising from the same story being differently told, and with a variation of colour or character, owing, we think, to the different genius of the collectors. Wider range of matter and a greater variety of topics will be found in Dr. Shortland. Sir George Grey's arrangement is more distinct; his treatment of a particular topic is more full and complete; and he oonfines himself to the exhibition of the native narrative. His treatment is more artistic. Opening with an exposition of the cosmogony of the New Zealanders, he proceeds to the mythology of their demigods and heroes, till he comes down to tales and ro- mances, generally with a touch of the supernatural in them. His object, in short, is to present the reader with the most striking traditions of the New Zealanders relating to the origin of the world and the exploits of their gods or progenitors, as nearly as possible as the reader might have them if recited by a New Zea- land priest. In parts that admit of it, this dramatic trait is well attained : many passages smack of the savage enthusiasm of the heathen sacterdos. This, however, is only in the character. The style, we think, is too English. Sir George Grey often seems to have reproduced rather than translated.

The greater number of Dr. Shortland's topics, and his mode of treatment, give an appearance of greater complexity to his ar- rangement. In addition to some of the mythology of Sir George, —often told more curtly, however, as if the original authority were less perfeet,--,Dr. Shortland enters more fully into the super- stitions ef the people, and the way in which those superstitions affect their manners and customs. The Doctor also deals in discus- sion. For example, after condensing into one narrative the different accounts which appear in Grey respecting the first peopling of the islands from a mythological place called Hawaiki, he rakes the often-disputed question of where Hawaiki is, and pronounces it to be the Sandwich Islands. Moreover, he mingles anecdotes and

• Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand Race, as furnished by their Priests and Chiefs. By Sir George Grey, late Governor- in-chief of New Zealand. Published by Murray. Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealander,; with Illustrations of their Manners and Customs. By Edward Shortland, M.A. Cantab.. Extra-Licenttate of the Royal College of Physicians, So. ; Author of " The Southern Districts of New Zealand." Published bx Longman and Co. personal narrative with illustration of the " traditions and super- stitions." In point of literary skill and dramatic character, the Doctor is inferior to the Governor. We think that his accounts possess the most raciness—have suffered less transmutation as re- spects style in the process of transmission. Both books are essen- tial to those who wish to study the curious question of the my- thology, superstitions' and manners of the New Zealatiders. The mythology, so far as relates to supernatural incidents and ideas, is less coherent and finished than those of some other peo- ples, not more advanced in useful and social arts than the New Zealanders. It seems fragmentary, as if mutilated through their emigration, or partially lost from the variety of tribes and dialects into which the people are divided. It may have been somewhat vitiated by communications with Europeans during the last eighty years. When Sir George Grey speaks of baptism by water in re-. ference to a mythological era, this must be a missionary idea, Or the translator substitutes the name of a Christian rite for that of some natal heathen ceremony. The starting-point of the New Zealand cosmogony is singular. At first, Light and Darkness were a dual person united together. In that state they begot aim sons, representing the powers of nature as they appear to the unin- structed mind,—for instance, Rongo-ma-tape, the god and father of the cultivated food of man." Five of the six children deter- mined to rend their parents apart. Four fail in the attempt. Tane-ma-huta, the god and father of forests, of birds, and of in- sects, succeeds after a struggle. The mother becomes the earth, the father the heavens. Those learned commentators who

"view In Homer more than Homer knew,"

may find in the detailed story of Sir George Grey, supported in a more brief and prosaic account by Dr. Shortland, matter for specu- lation. The classical mythologist may trace there the notion of Chaos; the Biblicist will recognize the idea of many of the texts of Genesis, especially of the creation of light; the natural philoso- pher may think he reads the personification of the more primitive condition of matter, and the violent forces which geology seems to show were operative in the earlier ages of our world. The notions which appear to lurk under this cosmogony, read by other lights, are certainly curious. The manner in which they are developed by embodying the deities of nature and connecting them with a species of allegorical adventures is puerile. Most of the mytho- logical tales representing the adventures of what we have called demigods are more puerile still. There is magic and enchantment without any of that preparation for the art which the stories of more advanced peoples exhibit. An ancient chief or demigod drags up earth from the ocean, ascends to heaven, holds the powers of nature in his thrall, and accomplishes other things equally diffi- cult ; yet as according to the theory of witchcraft, the wizard was powerless before the constable, so these mighty magicians cannot supply themselves with the commonest necessaries—a canoe, or a dish of fish—but have to resort to artifice to procure them. Artifice is indeed a favourite mode of action against enemies ; sometimes the art is as transparent as in children's stories, and not more likely to deceive. The human portion of the persons and in- cidents are of considerable value as a picture of New Zealand manners and ideas. The origin of their wars, often trivial enough to the eye of reason—the way in which they were waged, and avowed cannibalism as the common practice of life—are all very naturally and truly painted in some of the stories. In one of the tales collected by Sir George Grey, hostilities seem to have oc- curred between the emigrants to New Zealand and the parent stock. They originated in a curse, caused by the wife of the mighty chieftain Manaia having under-cooked the food at a great feast, for which she got a beating. They are carried on in part by enchantments that waft envoys and armies over thousands of miles of ocean, with similar magic. The following stratagem probably, the council and anticipated feast, are savagely naturaL "Then Ngatoro related to them all that his sister had told him ; and when they had heard this, Tangaroa, one of his chiefs, said, 'My council is, that we storm their fortress this night' ; but then stood up Rangitu, another chief, and said, 'Nay, but rather let us attack it in the morning.' Now arose Ngatoro' and he spake aloud to them and said—JI agree with neither of you. We must go to the sacred place, and strike our noses until they bleed and we are covered with blood, and then we must lie on the ground like dead bodies, every man with his weapon bid under him, and their priests will imagine that their enchantments have brought us here and slain us ; so shall we sur- prise them.' On hearing these words from their leader, they all arose and following him in a body to the court-yard of the sacred place., they found that the foolish priests had felt so sure of compelling their spirits by enchant- ments to bring Ngatoro and his tribe there, and to slay them for them, that they had even prepared ovens to cook their bodies in, and these were all lying open ready for the victims ; and by the aides of the ovens they had lain in mounds the green leaves, all prepared to place upon the victims before the earth was heaped in to cover them up, and the fire-wood and the stones were also lying ready to be heated. Then the one hundred and forty men went and laid themselves down in the ovens dug out of the earth, as though they had been dead bodies, and they turned themselves about, and beat themselves upon their noses and their faces until they bled, so that their bodies became all covered with blood, like the corpses of men slain in battle ; and then they lay still in the ovens : the weapons they had with them were short clubs of various kinds, such as clubs of jasper and of basalt, and of the bones of whales ; and the priests whom they had with them having found out the sacred place of the people of that country, entered it and hid themselves there.

"Thus they continued to lie in the evens until the sun arose next morn- ing, and until the priests of their enemies, according to their custom each day at dawn, came to spread leaves and other offerings to the gods in the sacred place; and there, to their surprise, these priests found the warriors of Ngatoro-i-rangi all lying heaped up in the ovens. Then the priests raised joyful shouts, crying—' At last our prayers have been answered by the gods, here, here are the bodies of the host of Ngatoro and of Tama', lying heaped up inithe cooking-places! This has been done by our god ; he carried them

off, and brought them here.' The multitude of people in the village hearing these cries, ran out to see the wonder ; and when they saw the bodies of the one hundred and forty lying there, with the blood in clots dried on them,

they began to cry out,—one have this .shoulder'; another, 'And rn have this thigh ' ; and a third, That head is mine ' ; for the blood shed from striking their noses during the previous night was now quite clotted on their bodies ; and the priests of those who were lying in the ovens having hidden themselves in the bushes of the shrubbery round the sacred place, could not be seen by the priests of the town of Ilanaia when they entered the sacred place to perform the fitting rites to the gods. "So these latter cried aloud, as they offered thanksgivings to the gods for having granted their prayers, and for having fulfilled their wishes : but just as their ceremonies were finished, the priests of the war party of Ngatoro-i- rangi rushing (out of their hiding-places) upon the other priests, slew them, so that the priests were first slain, as offerings to the gods. Then arose the one hundred and forty men from the ovens, and rushed upon their enemies: all were slain, not one escaped but hianaia, and he fled to the town; but they at once attacked and carried the town by assault, and then the slaughter ceased."

Both volumes are valuable as an exposition and a record of New Zealand superstitions and manners, now fast fading away. We are inclined to consider the books, especially Sir George Grey's, still more valuable as a contribution to the historical mate- rials of popular literature. Popular in the sense of produced by the people the stories are not; they wholly emanate from the chieftain and priestly order. But they are not the productions of men who make literature a distinct pursuit, like the Hebrew pro- phets, or the poets and philosophers of ancient Greece. To enter fully upon this subject would involve muoh conjectural inquiry. Did the New Zealanders bring this literature with them in its pre- sent or in a more perfect form ? Has it degenerated from lapse of time and the number of tribes? Was it really Oriental in its origin ; and was India the source of intellectual light not only to Western Asia and Europe, but even to the Pacific and America, so far as these last had light ? Do religions belief, the passions and characters, and the events of life, everywhere suggest an indi- genous literature? This discussion must be waived. We take the question as it stands, and find the native literature of New Zealand to contain a cosmogony in parts resembling other systems of the origin of things, and personifying in giant forms the productions of nature. There are stories constructed with a certain degree of purpose and nature, not in the human parts without an infusion of romance ; the machinery of magic and superior beings is con- tinually met with ; spirits appear sometimes as mischievous demons, sometimes more akin to the ghosts of the classical Hades. There are certain odd coincidences with ancient writings. When Kuiwai, the wife of Manaia, in revenge for the drubbing bestowed upon her, determines to inform her distant brother of the curse pronounced upon him, her female assistants carry off the popular gods. The original cause of the Trojan war was a fertile source of contest in New Zealand. Vulcan's contrivance to enmesh Mars and Venus appears on a grander scale. Instead of one warrior, a whole tribe—" nearly a thousand men "—are caught in the net of liaru-tuahn. The most singular coincidence of all is the existence of a class of beings which Sir George translates by the words " fairies "; and very like "the good people" they are. If the tale of Te Kanawa's adventure is really anterior to the arrival of Eu- ropeans, and without any Milesian colouring imparted since, it is as remarkable a production of unprofessional literature as we ever met. The reader will observe the use made of shadow.

" TE ILELEAWA'S ADVE.NTUBE WITH A. TROOP OF FAIRLES.

"Te Kanawa, a chief of Waikato, was the man who fell in with a troop of fairies upon the top of Puke-more, a high hill in the Waikato district. "This chief happened one day to go out to catch kiwis with his dogs, and when night came on he found himself right at the top of Puke-more. So his party made a fire to give them light, for it was very dark. They had chosen a tree to sleep under—a very large tree, the only one fit for their purpose that they could find ; in fact, it was a very convenient sleeping- place, for the tree had immense roots, sticking up high above the ground ; they slept between these roots, and made the fire beyond them.

" As soon as it was dark they heard loud voices, like the voices of people coming that way ; there were the voices of men, of women, and of children, as if a very large party of people were coming along. They looked for a long time, but could see nothing; till at last Te Kanawa knew the noise must proceed from fairies. His people were all dreadfully frightened, and would have run away if they could; but where could they run to ? for they were in the midst of a forest, on the top of a lonely mountain, and it was dark night.

"For a long time the voices grew louder and more distinct as the fairies drew nearer and nearer, until they came quite close to the fire ; Te Kanawa and his party were half dead with fright. At last the fairies approached to look at Te Kanawa, who was a very handsome fellow. To do this, they kept peeping slily over the large roots of the tree under which the hunters were lying, and kept constantly lookin at To Kanawa, whilst his compa- nions were quite insensible from fear. Whenever the fire blazed up brightly off went the fairies and hid themselves, peeping out from behind stumps and trees; and when it burnt low, back they came close to it, merrily singing as they moved,

' Here you come climbing over Mount Tirangi To visit the handsome chief of Ngapuhi, 'Whom we have done with.'

"A sudden thought struck To Kanawa, that he might induce them to go away if he gave them all the jewels he bad about him; so he took off a beautiful little figure, carved in green jasper, which he wore as a neck-orna- ment, and a precious carved jaaper ear-drop from his ear. Ah! Te Kanawa was only trying to amuse and *sae them to save his life, but all the time he was nearly frightened to death. However, the fairies did not rush on the men to attack them, but only came quite close to look at them. As soon as To Kanawa had taken off his neck-ornament, and pulled out his jasper ear- ring, and his other ear-ring made of a tooth of the tigerishark, he spread them out before the fairies, and offered them to the multitude who were sit- ting all round about the place; and thinking it better the fairies should not touch him, he took a stick, and fixing it into the ground, hung his neck- ornament and ear-rings upon it. "As soon as the fairies had ended their song, they took the shadows of the ear-rings and handed them about from one to the other, until they had passed through the whole party; which then suddenly disappeared, and no- thing more was seen of them. " The fairies carried off with them the shadows of all the jewels of To Kanawa, but they left behind them his jasper neck-ornament and his ear- rings, so that he took them back again, the hearts of the fairies being quite contented at getting the shadows alone ; they saw, also, that Te Kanaws was an honest well-dispoaitioned fellow. However, the next morning, as soon as it was light, he got down the mountain as fast as he could, without stopping to hunt longer for kiwis.

" The fairies are a very numerous people; merry, cheerful, and always singing, like the cricket. Their appearance is that of human beings, nearly resembling a European's ; their hair being very fair, and se is their skin. They are very different from the Miseries, and do not resemble them at all. " To Kanawa had died before any Europeans arrived in New Zealand."

As already observed, Dr. Shortland's book is more extensive in its range of subjects than Sir George Grey's. Laws, customs, the social state of the natives on the arrival of the Europeans, and even some of their practical arts, are handled, in addition to their superstitions and traditions, and what may be called unwritten literature, as stories and proverbs. Several of these topics have been already treated of by voyagers or emigrants ; but Dr. Short- land brings a more scholarly mind to bear upon the matters, and perhaps a fuller knowledge. He confirms Sir George Grey in various points especially in the fact which mainly induced the Governor to tale up the study of the language and literature— the impossibility of understanding the meaning of New Zealand set communications without that knowledge. They are so full of metaphorical allusions that the common people and the younger men do not themselves fully understand a regular oration. Some have even supposed that there is a double dialect ; one used for the common purposes of life, the other for public or sacred occa- sions. Dr. Shortland, however, doubts this. When Dryden contemplated an epic poem, he planned a new machinery in the guardian angels of nations. The idea exists in New Zealand. The Atua is the divinity of a tribe, extending his care only to those who retain their " civism."

"The interest taken by spirits of the dead in mundane affairs seldom ex- tends beyond the limits of the tribe to which they belong. Hence, persons taken in war and carried away as slaves by another tribe cease from that moment to be under the care of any Atua. The Atua of their own tribe trouble themselves not to follow them among a hostile tribe and hostile spirits; while the Atua of the tribe whose slaves they are never give them a thought. They are therefore independent of the law of tapu, as far as they are individually concerned—a fortunate circumstance for the comfort of the female portion of the community ; for it is owing to this belief that male slaves are able to assist them in a variety of menial offices connected with carrying and cooking food, which they could not in their free state have meddled in without incurring the anger of their Atua, and its consequence— sickness, and perhaps death."

" Tapu," or, as it is generally written "taboo," has been the means, in Dr. Shortland's opinion, of subjecting the New Zealand- ers to some injustice, from not considering the nature and exten- sive operation of the superstition. As in other places, etiquette has its bonds, and greatness its burden.

"One of the many subjects of reproach which have been brought against them is, that they employ their females in currying heavy loads of potatoes and other food on their backs, the practice bei,ng considered a sign of the laziness and inhumanity of the male portion of the community. From the light we have already thrown on their superstitions, it will be seen, that for any one whose back was tapu to carry a basket of food on it, would be to render it unlawful for any one but himself to eat of that food. So erroneous are the opinions which travellers are liable to form regarding the customs of a strange people, by judging only from what they see.

"By neglecting the law of tapu, Ariki, chiefs, and others peculiarly the objects of the care and protection of Atua, are subject to their displeasure more than persons in a humble station of life, and so are afraid to do a great many simple but necessary sets in private life, which must, therefore, be done by slaves, and by such females as are exempt from the law of tapu. For this reason, persons of the sacred class are in the habit of eating their meals in the open air, at a little distance from their dwelling-houses, and from the spot where they and their friends usually recline. Some few are so very sacred that each must have his food served up to him on a separate dish, and if he is unable to eat all that has been placed before him, the remainder must either be thrown away, or kept for his sole use when next hungry, by being placed in a sacred receptacle devoted to that purpose; for no human being would dare to eat what so sacred a person had left on his plate. In villages whose inhabitants are chiefly heathen these private larders are still use& Their shape is that of a house, though no larger than an ordinary-sized box ; and being stuck on top of posts six or seven feet high, they are rather con- spicuous objects in their court-yards, which can hardly fail to excite the curiosity of a stranger. "The dread lest the residue of their meal should be eat by another per- son has been the cause of a very singular custom,—namely, that guests always carry away with them all they are unable to eat of the food which is placed before them, even if they afterwards take the first opportunity to throw it away secretly."

The political ideas of the New Zealanders mostly breathe of blood, slaughter, fire, and cooking the enemy. A milder or more economical sentiment is occasionally met with in Grey, as well as in some of these proverbs from Dr. Shortland.

"He who is valiant in fight, is a valiant apt to stumble ; but he who is valiant in cultivating food is a valiant who will abide, even to a natural death, worn out by old age.

"Food given by another person is only a throat-tickler ; but food gained by the labour of one's own hand is the food which satisfies. "Cold which is only skin-deep, stealing warmth, is not worth a word of eomplaint.

"The large chips made by Mr. Hardwork fall to the share of Mr. Bastin, " Moral—The food of those who labour often falls to the share of thceewho

are lazy.

"A man fond of sleep, and amen fond of idleness, will never obtain wealth.

"The passing clouds can be seen; but passing thoughts cannot be seen. "A crooked part of a stein of toetoe can be seen ;but a crooked part in the

• • heart cannot be seen.

"He who goes before gathers treasures ; he who is left to follow behind looks for them in vain." In addition to their value as pictures of the customs, supersti- tions, and manners of a very remarkable race, as well as memorials of literary history, both works may be recommended for their ox• hibitions of man in a natural state—which appears a very fallen state indeed.