"Tum pater omnipotens fecundis imbribus Aether
Coniugis in gremium laetae descendit, et omnes
Magnus alit, magno commixtus corpore, fetus."
But in the beginning Heaven lay close to the Earth and all was dim and dark. There was life but not light. So their children, tired of groping about within narrow and gloomy limits, conspired together to force them asunder and let in the day. These were Tu, the scarlet-belted god of men and war, Tané, the forest god, and their brother, the sea-god. With them joined the god of cultivated food, such as the kumara, and the god of food that grows wild—such as the fern-root. The conspirators cut great poles with which to prop up Heaven. But the father and mother were not to be easily separated. They clung to each other despite the efforts of their unnatural sons. Then Tané, the tree-god, standing on head and hands, placed his feet against Heaven and, pushing hard, forced Rangi upwards. In that attitude the trees, the children of Tané, remain to this day. Thus was the separation accomplished, and Rangi and Papa must for ever remain asunder. Yet the tears of Heaven still trickle down and fall as dew-drops upon the face of his spouse, and the mists that rise in the evening from her bosom are the sighs of regret which she sends up to her husband on high.[1]
[Footnote 1: Sir George Grey, Polynesian Mythology.]
Vengeance, however, fell upon the conspirators. A sixth brother had had nothing to do with their plot. This was Tawhiri-Matea, the god of winds and storms. He loyally accompanied his father to the realms above, whence he descended on his rebel brothers in furious tempests. The sea-god fled to the ocean, where he and his children dwell as fishes. The two gods of plant-food hid in the Earth, and she, forgiving mother that she was, sheltered them in her breast. Only Tu, the god of mankind, stayed erect and undaunted. So it is that the winds and storms make war to this day upon men, wrecking their canoes, tearing down their houses and fences and ruining all their handiwork. Not only does man hold out against these attacks, but, in revenge for the cowardly desertion of Tu by his weaker brethren, men, his people, prey upon the fish and upon the plants that give food whether wild or cultivated.
Space will scarcely permit even a reference to other Maori myths—to the tale, for instance, of the great flood which came in answer to the prayers of two faithful priests as punishment for the unbelief, the discords and the wickedness of mankind; then all were drowned save a little handful of men and women who floated about on a raft for eight moons and so reached Hawaiki. Of the creation of man suffice it to say that he was made by Tiki, who formed him out of red clay, or, as some say, out of clay reddened by his own blood. Woman's origin was more ethereal and poetic; her sire was a noonday sunbeam, her mother a sylvan echo. Many are the legends of the hero, Maui. He lassooed the sun with ropes and beat him till he had to go slower, and so the day grew longer. The first ropes thus used were of flax, which burned and snapped in the sun's heat. Then Maui twisted a cord of the tresses of his sister, Ina, and this stayed unconsumed. It was Maui who went to fetch for man's use the fire which streamed from the finger-nails of the fire goddess, and who fished up the North Island of New Zealand, still called by the Maoris Te Ika a Maui, the fish of Maui. He first taught tattooing and the art of catching fish with bait, and died in the endeavour to gain immortality for men. Death would have been done away with had Maui successfully accomplished the feat of creeping through the body of a certain gigantic goddess. But that flippant and restless little bird, the fan-tail, was so tickled at the sight of the hero crawling down the monster's throat that it tittered and burst into laughter. So the goblin awoke, and Maui died for man in vain.
Such are some of the sacred myths of the Maori. They vary very greatly in different tribes and are loaded with masses of detail largely genealogical. The religious myths form but one portion of an immense body of traditional lore, made up of songs and chants, genealogies, tribal histories, fables, fairy-tales and romantic stories. Utterly ignorant as the Maoris were of any kind of writing or picture-drawing, the volume of their lore is amazing, and is an example of the power of the human memory when assiduously cultivated. Very great care was, of course, taken to hand it down from father to son in the priestly families. In certain places in New Zealand, notably at Wanganui, sacred colleges stood called Whare-kura (Red-house). These halls had to be built by priestly hands, stood turned to the east, and could only be approached by the purified. They were dedicated by sacrifice, sometimes of a dog, sometimes of a human being. The pupils, who were boys of high rank, went, at the time of admission, through a form of baptism. The term of instruction lasted through the autumns and winters of five years. The hours were from sunset to midnight. Only one woman, an aged priestess, was admitted into the hall, and she only to perform certain incantations. No one might eat or sleep there, and any pupil who fell asleep during instruction was at once thrust forth, was expected to go home and die, and doubtless usually did so. Infinite pains were taken to impress on the pupils' memories the exact wording of traditions. As much as a month would be devoted to constant repetitions of a single myth. They were taught the tricks of the priestly wizard's trade, and became expert physiognomists, ventriloquists, and possibly, in some cases, hypnotists. Public exhibitions afterwards tested the accuracy of their memories and their skill in witchcraft. On this their fate depended. A successful Tohunga, or wizard, lived on the fat of the land; a few failures, and he was treated with discredit and contempt.
Though so undoubted an authority as Mr. William Colenso sums up the old-time Maori as a secularist, it is not easy entirely to agree with him. Not only had the Maori, as already indicated, an elaborate—too elaborate—mythology, but he had a code of equally wide and minute observances which he actually did observe. Not only had he many gods both of light and evil, but the Rev. James Stack, a most experienced student, says that he conceived of his gods as something more than embodiments of power—as beings "interested in human affairs and able to see and hear from the highest of the heavens what took place on earth." Mr. Colenso himself dwells upon the Maori faith in dreams, omens, and charms, and on the universal dread felt for kehuas or ghosts, and atuas or demon spirits. Moreover, the code of observances aforesaid was no mere secular law. It was the celebrated system of tapu (taboo), and was not only one of the most extraordinary and vigorous sets of ordinances ever devised by barbarous man, but depended for its influence and prestige not mainly upon the secular arm or even public opinion, but upon the injunction and support of unseen and spiritual powers. If a man broke the tapu law, his punishment was not merely to be shunned by his fellows or—in some cases—plundered of his goods. Divine vengeance in one or other form would swiftly fall upon him—probably in the practical shape of the entry into his body of an evil spirit to gnaw him to death with cruel teeth. Men whose terror of such punishment as this, and whose vivid faith in the imminence thereof, were strong enough to kill them were much more, or less, than secularists.
The well-known principle that there is no potent, respected, and lasting institution, however strange, but has its roots in practical usefulness, is amply verified in the case of tapu. By it authority was ensured, dignity hedged about with respect, and property and public health protected. Any person, place or thing laid under tapu might not be touched, and sometimes not even approached. A betrothed maiden defended by tapu was as sacred as a vestal virgin of Rome; a shrine became a Holy Place; the head of a chief something which it was sacrilege to lay hands on. The back of a man of noble birth could not be degraded by bearing burdens—an awkward prohibition in moments when no slave or woman happened to be in attendance on these lordly beings. Anything cooked for a chief was forbidden food to an inferior. The author of Old New Zealand tells of an unlucky slave who unwittingly ate the remains of a chiefs dinner. When the knowledge of this frightful crime was flashed upon him, he was seized with internal cramps and pains and, though a strong man, died in a few hours. The weapons and personal effects of a chief were, of course, sacred even in the opinion of a thief, but tapu went further. Even the fire a chief had lit might not be used by commoners. As for priests, after the performance of certain ceremonies they for a time had perforce to become too sacred to feed themselves with their hands. Food would be laid down before them and kneeling, or on all-fours like dogs, they had to pick it up with their teeth. Perhaps their lot might be so far mitigated that a maiden would be permitted to convey food to their mouths on the end of a fern-stalk—a much less disagreeable process for the eater. Growing fields of the sweet potato were sacred for obvious reasons, as were those who were working therein. So were burial-places and the bones of the dead. The author above-mentioned chancing one day on a journey to pick up a human skull which had been left exposed by a land-slide, immediately became an outcast shunned by acquaintances, friends and his own household, as though he were a very leper. Before he could be officially cleansed and readmitted into decent Maori society, his clothing and furniture had to be destroyed, and his kitchen abandoned. By such means did this—to us—ridiculous superstition secure reverence for the dead and some avoidance of infection. To this end the professional grave-digger and corpse-bearer of a Maori village was tapu, and lived loathed and utterly apart. Sick persons were often treated in the same way, and inasmuch as the unlucky might be supposed to have offended the gods, the victims of sudden and striking misfortune were treated as law-breakers and subjected to the punishment of Muru described in the last chapter.