Folktales of the Maori [antikvár]

PREFACE. IT has been a pleasant task to preserve from forgetfulness tales which, while they illumine for us the mental workings of a primitive people, at the same time prove indubitably that the sturdy Maori, who tattooed his body with grotesque patterns, was possessed of a soul, sensitive beyond belief to romantic and sentimental impressions, and that in his musings his barbaric mind frequently leaped to a mental altitude as high as that attained by the great mythologists of the ancients. Indeed, what will perhaps be regarded as the most remarkable feature of these tales is the similarity which some of them bear to certain Greek myths. In "The Moon Girl" there is a distinct likeness to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice ; "The Courting of Kirika " will probably recall the tale of Hercules and Deianeira ; " The Tame Taniwha " will suggest the stories of Arion, of Neptune and Amphitrite, and the great Apollo myth. Other resemblances to Aryan mythology will be found in them, but nevertheless they all are tales whose authors had never so much as heard of Homer, Hesiod, or Herodotus, and to whom Greek mythL)logy was a sealed book. All but four of the tales treat of the Maori in his aboriginal state, and have been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation ; three belong to the period when contact with the white man was beginning ; and one is included for the purpose of showing that even at the time of writing, when an imperfectly assimilated civilization has done so much to ruin a fine race, there exist members of it whose minds are still as primitive and simple as were those of their ancestors. Karepa Te Whetu, who gave me most valuable assistance in the work of compilation, was a member of the Ngati-Koata tribe, a man of acute and artistic mind, a lover of tales for their own sake, and a humourist of no mean order. When I told him of my wish to make a collection of the folk-tales of his race, he entered into my project with enthusiasm Persistently he sounded the depths of his memory, untiringly he collected during his peregrinations, extending over seven years, the best and most repre-