John Rutherford, the White Chief: A Story of Adventure in New Zealand

by George L. Craik

It would be easy to enumerate many minor superstitions, all indicative of the extraordinary influence of the same belief. They think, for instance, that if they were to allow a fire to be lighted under a shed where there are provisions, their god would kill them.

They have many superstitions, also, with regard to cutting their hair. Cook speaks, in the account of his third voyage, of a young man he had taken on board the ship, who, having one day performed this ceremony, could not be prevailed upon to eat a morsel till night, insisting that the atua would most certainly kill him if he did.

Cruise tells us that Tetoro, on the voyage from Port Jackson, cut the hair of one of his companions, and continued to repeat prayers over him during the whole operation.

Nicholas, having one day found another chief busy in cutting his wife's hair with a piece of sharp stone, was going to take up the implement after it had been used, but was immediately charged by the chief not to touch it, as the deity of New Zealand would wreak his vengeance on him if he presumed to commit so daring a piece of impiety.

"Laughing at his superstition," continues Nicholas, "I began to exclaim against its absurdity, but like Tooi, on a former occasion, he retorted by ridiculing our preaching, yet at the same time asking me to sermonize over his wife, as if his object was to have her exorcised; and upon my refusing, he began himself, but could not proceed from involuntary bursts of laughter."

On this occasion, the chief, when he had cut off the hair, collected it all together, and, carrying it to the outskirts of the town, threw it away. Cook remarks that he used to see quantities of hair tied to the branches of the trees near the villages. It is stated, in a letter from one of the missionaries, that the hair, when cut, is carefully collected, and buried in a secret place.

Certain superstitions have been connected with the cutting of the hair, from the most ancient times. Many allusions are found in the Greek and Roman writers to the practice of cutting off the hair of the dead, and presenting it as an offering to the infernal gods, in order to secure a free passage to Elysium for the person to whom it belonged. The passage in the fourth book of the "Æneid," where Iris appears by the command of Juno to liberate the soul of the expiring Queen of Carthage, by thus severing from her head the fatal lock, will occur to many of our readers.

Whatever may have been the origin of this superstition, it is probable that most of the other notions and customs which have prevailed in regard to the cutting of the hair are connected with it. The act in this way naturally became significant of the separation from the living world of the person on whom it was performed. Of the antiquity of this practice, we have a proof in a command given by Moses to the Jews:—"Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead." These were superstitious customs of the nations by whom they were surrounded.

The Gentiles used excessive lamentations, amounting to frenzy, at their funeral rites. According to Bruce, the Abyssinian woman, upon the death of a near relation, cuts the skin of both her temples with the nail of her little finger, which she leaves long on purpose; and thus every fair face throughout the country is disfigured with scars. The same notion of abstraction from the present life and its concerns is expressed by the clerical tonsure, so long known in the Christian church, and still retained among the Roman Catholics. It is still common, also, among ourselves, for widows, in the earlier period of their mourning, to cut off their hair, or to remove it back from the brow. Among all rude nations, besides, the hair has been held in peculiar estimation from its ornamental nature, and its capability of being formed into any shape, according to the fancy of its possessor, or the fashion of the country.

Amongst nations, especially, where the ordinary clothing of the people, from the materials of which it was formed, did not admit of being made very decorative, this consideration would be much regarded, and still more where no clothing was worn at all. In such cases, the hair, either of the head or of the beard, has usually been cherished with very affectionate care, and the mode of dressing it has been made matter of anxious regulation. Many of the barbarous nations of antiquity had each a method of cutting the hair peculiar to itself; and it was sometimes accounted the deepest mark of servitude which a conqueror could impose when he compelled the violation of this sacred rule of national manners.