Myths And Songs From The South Pacific

Front matter

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Preface

HAVING expressed a strong desire that the collection of Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, which the Rev. W. Wyatt Gill brought home with him from Mangaia, should not be allowed to lie forgotten, or, like other valuable materials collected by hardworking missionaries, perish altogether, I could not well decline to state, in a few words, what I consider the real importance of this collection to be.

I confess it seemed strange to me that its importance should be questioned. If new minerals, plants, or animals are discovered, if strange petrifactions are brought to light, if flints or other stone weapons are dredged up, or works of art disinterred, even if a hitherto unknown language is rendered accessible for the first time, no one, I think, who is acquainted with the scientific problems of our age, would ask what their importance consists in, or what they vi Preface.

are good for. Whether they are products of nature or works of man, if only there is no doubt as to their genuineness, they claim and most readily receive the attention, not only of the learned, but also of the intelligent public at large.

Now, what are these Myths and Songs which Mr. W. W. Gill has brought home from Mangaia, but antiquities, preserved for hundreds, it may be for thousands of years, showing us, far better than any stone weapons or stone idols, the growth of the human mind during a period which, as yet, is full of the most perplexing problems to the psychologist, the historian, and the theologian ? The only hope of our ever unravelling the perplexities of that mythological period, or that mythopceic phase of the human intellect, lies in our gaining access to every kind of collateral evidence. We know that mythopceic period among the Aryan and Semitic races, but we know it from a distance only, and where are we to look now for living myths and legends, except among those who still think and speak mythologically, who are, in fact, at the present moment what the Hindus were before the collection of their sacred hymns, and the Greeks long before the days of Homer? To find ourselves among a people who really believe in gods and heroes and ancestral spirits, who still offer human sacrifices, who in some cases devour their human victims, or, at all events, burn the flesh of animals on their altars, trusting that the scent will be sweet to the nostrils of their gods, is as if the zoologist could spend a few days among the megatheria,

Preface. vii

or the botanist among the waving ferns of the forests, buried beneath our feet. So much is written just now, and has been written during the last fifty years, on human archaeology, on the growth and progress of the intellect, on the origin of religion, on the first beginnings of social institutions ; so many theories have been started, so many generalizations put forward with perfect confidence, that one might almost imagine that all the evidence was before us, and no more new light could be expected from anywhere. But the very contrary is the case. There are many regions still to be explored, there are many facts, now put forward as certain, which require the most careful inspection, and as we read again and again the minute descriptions of the journey which man is supposed to have made from station to station, from his childhood to his manhood, or, it may be, his old age, it is difficult to resist a feeling of amazement, and to suppress at almost every page the exclamation, Wait ! wait !

There are the two antagonistic schools, each holding its tenets with a kind of religious fervour the one believing in a descending, the other in an ascending, development of the human race ; the one asserting that the history of the human mind begins of necessity with a state of purity and simplicity which gradually gives way to corruption, perversity, and savagery ; the other maintaining with equal confidence, that the first human beings could not have been more than one step above the animals, and that their whole history is one of progress towards higher perfection. With viii Preface.

regard to the beginnings of religion, the one school holds to a primitive suspicion of something that is beyond call it supernatural, transcendent, or divine. It considers a silent walking across tbis/Wfo* of life, with eyes fixed on high, as a more perfect realisation of primitive religion than singing of Vedic hymns, offerof Jewish sacrifices, or the most elaborate creeds and articles. The other begins with the purely animal and passive nature of man,

* " So, on the I2th of August, we made the steep ascent to the village of Namgea, and from there to a very unpleasant jkitta, which crosses the foaming torrent of the Sutlej. In this part of the Himalaya, and, indeed, on to Kashmir, these bridges are constructed of twigs, chiefly from birch trees or bushes, twisted together. Two thick ropes of these twigs, about the size of a man's thigh, or a little larger, are stretched across the river, at a distance of about six to four feet from each other, and a similar rope runs between them, three or four feet lower, being connected with the upper ropes by more .slender ropes, also usually of birch twigs twisted together, but sometimes of grass, and occurring at an interval of about five feet from each other. The unpleasantness of a jfaila is that the passenger has no proper hold of the upper ropes, which are too thick and rough to be grasped by the hand; and that, at the extremities, they are so far apart that it is difficult to have any hold of both at the same time ; while the danger is increased by the bend or hang of the jhitta, which is much lower in the middle than at its ends. He has also to stoop painfully in order to move along it, and it is seldom safe for him to rest his feet on the lower rope, except where it is supported from the upper ropes by the transverse ones. To fall into the raging torrent underneath would be almost certain destruction. The high wind which usually prevails in the Himalaya during the day, makes the whole structure swing about frightfully. In the middle of the bridge there is a cross-bar of wood (to keep the two upper ropes separate) which has to be stepped over ; and it is not customary to repair a jhi'tla until some one falls through it, and so gives practical demonstration that it is in rather a rotten condition." ANDREW WILSON, "The Abode of Snow/' p. 197.

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and tries to show how the repeated impressions of the world in which he lived, drove him to fetichism, whatever that may mean, to ancestor-worship, to a worship of nature, of trees and serpents , of mountains and rivers, of clouds and meteors, of sun and moon and stars, and the vault of heaven, and at last, by what is called a natural mistake, of One who dwells in heaven above.

There is some truth in every one of these views ; but they become untrue by being generalized. The time has not come yet, it probably never will come, when we shall be able to assert anything about the real beginnings of religion in general. We know a little here, a little there, but whatever we know of early religion, we always see that it presupposes vast periods of an earlier development.

Some people imagine that fetichism, at all events, presupposes nothing : they would probably not hesitate to ascribe to some of the higher animals the faculty of fetich-worship. But few words are so devoid of scientific precision as fetichism, a term first rendered popular by the writings of De Brosses. Let us suppose that it means a kind of temporary worship of any material object which the fancy may happen to select, as a tree, a stone, a post, an animal: can that be called a primitive form of religion? First of all, religion is one thing, worship another, and the two are by no means necessarily connected. But, even if they were, what is the

meaning of worship paid to a stone, but the outward sign of a

b x Preface.

pre-existent belief that this stone is more than a stone, something supernatural, it may be something divine, so that the ideas of the supernatural and the divine, instead of growing out of fetichism, are generally, if not always, presupposed by it? The same applies to ancestor-worship, which not only presupposes the conceptions of immortality and of the ideal unity of a family, but implies in many cases a belief that the spirits of the departed are worthy to share the honours paid to divine beings.

To maintain that all religion begins with fetichism, all mythology with ancestor-worship, is simply untrue, as far as our present knowledge goes. There is fetichism, there is ancestor-worship, there is nature-worship, whether of trees or serpents, of mountains or rivers, of clouds and meteors, of sun and moon and stars, and the vault of heaven \ there is all this, and there is much more than all this, wherever we can watch the early growth of religious ideas : but, what we have to learn is, first of all, to distinguish, to study each religion, each mythology, each form of worship by itself, to watch them during successive periods of their growth and decay, to follow them through different strata of society, and before all, to have each of them, as much as possible, studied in their o\vn language.

If language is the realization of thought and feeling, the importance of a knowledge of the language for a correct appreciation of what it was meant to convey in the expression of religious

Preface. xi

thought and feeling, requires no proof. I have often insisted on this, and I have tried to show whether successfully or not, let others judge that much of what seems at first irrational and inexplicable in mythology, and in religion also, can be explained by the influence which language exercises on thought I have never said that the whole of mythology can be explained in that way, that all that seems irrational is due to a misunderstanding, or that all mythology is a disease of language. Some parts of mythology I have proved to be soluble by means of linguistic tests, but mythology as a whole I have always represented as a complete period of thought, inevitable, I believe, in the development of human thought, and comprehending all and everything that at a given time can fall within the horizon of the human mind. The Nemesis of disproportion seems to haunt all new discoveries. Parts of mythology are religious, parts of mythology are historical, parts of mythology are metaphysical, parts of mythology are poetical; but mythology as a whole is neither religion, nor history, nor philosophy, nor poetry. It comprehends all these together under that peculiar form of expression which is natural and intelligible at a certain stage, or at certain recurring stages in the development of thought and speech, but which, after becoming traditional, becomes frequently unnatural and unintelligible. In the same manner nature-worship, treeworship, serpent-worship, ancestor-worship, god-worship, heroworship, fetichism, all are parts of religion, but none of these by itself can explain the origin or growth of religion, which comprexii Preface.

hends all these and many more elements in the various phases of its growth.

If anything can help to impress upon students of religion and mythology the necessity of caution, the advantage of special research, and, above all, the necessity of a scholarlike treatment, it is a book like that of Mr. Gill, an account of a religion and mythology which were still living in the island of Mangaia, when Mr. Gill went there as a missionary twenty-two years ago, and which, as they died away before his eyes, he carefully described to us from what he saw himself, from what the last depositaries of the old faith told him, and from what was recorded of it in sacred songs, which he gives us in the original, with literal translations.

It is true that the religion and mythology of the Polynesian race have often been treated before, but one of their greatest charms consists in the very fact that we possess them in so many forms. Each island has, so to say, its own religious and mythological dialect, and though there is much that is common to all, and must therefore be old, there is at the same time much local and individual variety. Again, the great advantage of Mr. Gill's collection is that Mangaia has kept itself freer from foreign influences than almost any other of the Polynesian islands. " The isolation of the Hervey Islanders," he says, "was in favour of the purity of their traditions, and the extreme jealousy with which they were guarded was rather an advantage than otherwise." When we fmd strange*

Preface. xiii

coincidences between the legends of Mangaia and Jewish, Christian, or classical stories, we need not suspect that former European travellers had dropped the germs of them, or that missionaries had given, unconsciously, their own colouring to them. Mr. Gill has been specially on the guard against this and other sources of error. " Whilst collecting my myths," he says, " I put away from me all classical mythology, being afraid that unconsciously I might mould these Polynesian stories into similarity with those of Greece and Rome.

On my making inquiries whether the Polynesian tradition about Eve (Ivi), which I had discussed in my " Science of Religion " (p. 304), was to be found in Mangaia, Mr. Gill informed me that it was not, and that he strongly suspected its European origin. The elements of the story may have previously existed, and we see some traces of it in the account of the creation current in Mangaia, but Mr. Gill suspects that some of the mutineers of the Bounty may have told the natives the Bible story, and that it became incorporated with their own notions.

The jawbone, too, with which we are told that Maui, the great solar hero of the Polynesians, destroyed his enemies, is absent in Mangaia. When I inquired about it, Mr. Gill informed me that he never heard of it in the Hervey Group in connection with Maui.

Such things are extremely important for a proper treatment of xiv Preface.

mythology. I hold no longer to the rule that when two mythologies agree in what is irrational or foolish, they must have had the same origin, or must have come into contact with each other at some period of their history. If there was a reason for the jawbone to be used as a weapon in one country, the same reason may have existed in another. But, even if there was no reason, a fact that happened or was imagined to have happened in one place may surely have happened or have been imagined to have happened in another. At first, no doubt, we feel startled by such coincidences ; and that they often offer a primfr fade presumption in favour of a common origin cannot be denied. But as we read on from one mythology to another, our sensitiveness with regard to these coincidences becomes blunted, and we feel hardened against appeals which are founded exclusively on such evidence.

At first sight, what can be more startling than to see the interior of the world, the invisible or nether world, the Hades of the Mangaians, called Avaiki^ AvLH being the name of one of the lower regions, both among Brahmans and Buddhists? But we have only to look around, and we find that in Tahitian the name for Hades is Hawaii, in New Zealand Jffawaiki, and more originally, I suppose, Sawaiki; so that the similarity between the Sanskrit and Polynesian words vanishes very quickly.

That the name of the Sun-god in Mangaia is Ra has been pointed out as a strange coincidence with Egypt ; but more really

Preface. xv

important is the story of Ra being made captive, as reminding us of similar solar legends in Greece, Germany, Peru, and elsewhere.*

Who can read the Mangaian story of Ina (the moon) and her mortal lover, who, as he grew old and infirm, had to be sent back to the earth to end his days there, without thinking of Selene and Endymion, of Eos and Tithonos ?

Who again, if acquainted with the Vedic myth of the Maruts^ the strikers, the Storm-gods, and their gradual change into the Roman god of war, Mars, can fail to see the same transition of thought in several of the gods of the storms, of war and destruction among the Polynesians, though here again the similarity in the name of Maru is purely accidental.

In some of the Polynesian islands the Deluge is said to have lasted exactly forty days. This, no doubt, is startling. It may be the result of missionary influence. But, even if it were not, the coincidence between the Polynesian and the Jewish accounts on that one point may be either purely accidental, or may be founded on rude meteorological calculations which we have not yet detected. I do not like to quote coincidences from American traditions, because we know that we are never safe there against

* Chips from a German Workshop. 2nd Edition, vol. ii. p. 116.

t Rig-Veda-Sanhita, The Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans. Translated by F. Max Mutter. Vol. i. Hymns to the Maruts, or the Storm-Gods. London, Trubner and Co. 1869.

xvi Preface.

Spanish by-notes; otherwise the account of the Toltec deluge, and the statement that the mountains were covered to the depth of "fifteen cubics," might be quoted as another undesigned coincidence.* According to the Chimalpopoca MS., the Creator produced His work in successive epochs, man being made on the seventh day from dust and ashes. Why, we may ask, on the seventh day? But others, without even insisting on the peculiar character of the seventh number, may simply ask, Why not? There is much similarity between the Hindi! account of the Deluge and the Jewish ; but no one who has read the numerous accounts of a deluge in other parts of the world, would feel much surprised at this. At all events, if we admitted a common origin of the two, or an actual borrowing, then to explain the differences between them would be extremely difficult. The only startling coincidence is, that in India the flood is said to begin on the seventh day after it had been announced to Manu. Considering, however, that the seventh day is mentioned in the " Bhagavatu- Purina" only, I feel inclined to look upon it as merely accidental. It might, no doubt, have been borrowed from Jewish or even Mohammedan sources; but how can we imagine any reason why so unmeaning a fact should have been taken over, while on so many other points, where there was every temptation to borrow, nothing was done to assimilate the two accounts, or to remove features of which, at that time, the Hindus might well be supposed to have been ashamed? I mention all this for the sole purpose of * Bancroft, Native Races, vol. v. p. 20.

Preface. xvii

preaching patience and caution and I preach it against myself quite as much as against others, as a warning against exclusive theories.

On every page of these Mangaian legends there is evidence that many of them owe their origin to language, whether we adopt the theory that the Mangaians played on the words, or that their words played on them. Mr. Gill himself fully admits this ; but to say that the whole of the Mangaian mythology and theology owed its origin to the oxydizing process to which language is exposed in every country, would be to mistake the rust for the iron.

With all these uncertainties before us, with the ground shaking under our feet, who would venture to erect at present complete systematic theories of mythology or religion? Let any one who thinks that all religion begins with fetichism, all worship with ancestor-worship, or that the whole of mythology everywhere can be explained as a disease of language, try his hand on this short account of the beliefs and traditions of Mangaia ; and if he finds that he fails to bring even so small a segment of the world's religion and mythology into the narrow circle of his own system, let him pause before he ventures to lay down rules as to how man, on ascending from a lower or descending from a higher state, must have spoken, must have believed, must have worshipped. If Mr. Gill's book were to produce no other effect but this, it would have proved one of the most useful works at the present moment.

xviii Preface.

But it contains much that in itself will deeply interest all those who have learned to sympathize with the childhood of the world, and have not forgotten that the child is the father of the man; much Jhat will startle those who think that metaphysical conceptions are incompatible with downright savagery ; much also that will comfort those who hold that God has not left Himself without a witness, even among the lowest outcasts of the human race.

F. MAX MULLER.

OXFORD, January 26, 1876.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

THE writer of the following pages has been for twenty-two years a missionary in the Hervey Group, a small cluster of islands in the South Pacific, lying between the 19 and 22 parallels of S. latitude and 157 and 160 of W. longitude.

He has sought to reproduce, as nearly as possible, the traditionary beliefs of a small section of the widely scattered Polynesian family. On them the hopes and aspirations of many past generations were founded. We correctly call the entire system a "mythology;" to them it was a "theology," the true doctrine of the visible and the invisible world. The actual working of these false ethics was unceasing and pitiless war, unbridled and unblushing profligacy. Correct knowledge of these "mysteries" was possessed only by the priests and " wise men " of the different tribes. By them the teachings of the past were embodied in songs, to be chanted at their national festivals. These songs possessed great fascination for the native intellect, and tended to the preservation of the ancient faith. The writer's object is simply to aid the student of ethnology in his researches.

While there is much that is puerile and absurd in this heathen philosophy, there are evident glimmerings of primeval light The xx Introductory Remarks.

Polynesian name for God expresses a great truth. The continued existence of the human spirit after death is implied ^ in their "laments" and in the beautiful allegory of Vetini. The cruel system of human sacrifice is but a perversion of ancient truth. The common origin of mankind is taught in the contrast between "the fair-haired and fair-skinned children of Tangaroa," and "the dark-haired and dark-skinned children of Rongo;" both the offspring of Great Vatea. There is an undercurrent of yearning after the True God in some of their songs; e.g. as when Korea sings (p. 215) :

Oh, for some other Helper !

Some new divinity, to listen To the sad story of thy wasting disease !

As the result of many years' inquiry into the ancient faith of Polynesia, the writer most heartily endorses the remark of Professor Max Miiller : " Wherever there are traces of human life, there are traces also of religion." *

A large portion of what is contained in this volume was derived from Tereavai, the last priest of the shark-god Tiaio. Some links in the system were irrecoverably lost by the slaughter of his father Tuka, at the battle of Araeva, not long before the landing of the first Christian teachers. Nothing but the cordial reception of the new faith could have induced Tereavai to yield up to the stranger the esoteric teachings of the priestly clan. The writer throughout has been greatly indebted to the sagacity and unwearied patience of Sadaraka (grandson of the poet Koroa), who is allowed by his own countrymen to be the best living critic of his own language. Each island in the group had a dialect, a history, and a worship of its own. The language of ancient Polynesian

* Science of Religion, p. 118*

Introductory Remarks. xxi

song is not that now spoken; bearing the same relation to the living tongue as the Greek of Homer does to that of Xenophon. The myths and prayers (karakia) are believed to be of great antiquity. The dirges and clan-songs are modern, but are doubtless echoes of older compositions. Should the present volume meet with acceptances a collection of "Prehistoric Sketches," with illustrative clan-songs, may hereafter appear.

W. to GILL LEWISHAM, January, 1876.

Contents

I. MYTHS OF CREATION.

PAGE

The Beginning of all things. Dramatic song of creation ... ... i

Chapter I. Myths Of Creation

THE BEGINNING OF ALL THINGS.

THE universe of these islanders is to be conceived of as the hollow of a vast cocoa-nut shell, as in the accompanying diagram. (See next page.)

The interior of this imaginary shell is named Avaiki. At the top is a single aperture communicating with the upper world, where mortals (i.e. Mangaians) live. At various depths are different floorings, or lands, communicating with each other. But at the very bottom of this supposed cocoa-nut shell is a thick stem, gradually tapering to a point, which represents the very beginning of all things. This point is a spirit or demon, without human form, and is named Te-aka-ia-Roe, 1 or Thc-root-of-all-cxistence. The entire

1 Roe thread -woim. The idea is of a quivering, slender, worm-like point, at which existence begins, i.g. the extremity of the thread-worm.

B

Myths and Songs.

fabric of the universe is constantly sustained by this primary being.

Above this extreme point is Te-tangaengae, or Te-vaerua; that is to say, Breathing, or Life. This demon is stouter and

,nd. "ham*, q/T&fa>

This diagram will suit the mythology of many other islands ; substituting, for instance, "Tahiti" for "Mangaia," as the land where egress and ingress to Avaiki exist.

Myths of Creation.

stronger than the former one. But the thickest part of the stem is Te-manava-roa, or The-long-liwd, the third and last of the primary, ever-stationary, sentient spirits, who themselves constitute the foundation, and insure the permanence and well-being of all the rest of the universe.

We advance now to the interior of the supposed cocoa-nut shell. In the lowest depth of Avaiki, where the sides of the imaginary shell nearly meet, lives a woman a demon, of flesh and blood named Vari-ma-te-takere, 1 or The-very-beginning. Such is the narrowness of her territory that her knees and chin touch, no other position being possible. Vari-ma-te-takere was very anxious for progeny. One day she plucked off a bit of her right side, and it became a human being the first man Avatea, or Vatea (the elision of the a in Avatea is compensated by the elongation of the second vowel).

Now Vatea, the father of gods and men, was half man and half fish, the division being like the two halves of the human body. The species of fish to which this great divinity was allied being the taairangi (Cetacca), or great sea monsters, i.e. porpoises, whose sides are covered with pure fat, and whose home is the boundless ocean. Thus one eye of Vatea was human, the other a fish-eye. His right side was furnished with an arm ; the left with a fin. He had one proper foot, and half a fish-tail.

But there is another, and probably far more ancient, account of Vatea, or Avatea, which means noon in all the dialects of Eastern Polynesia. 2 Vatea is a man possessed of two magnificent eyes, rarely visible at the same time. In general, whilst one,

1 Literally, Th*btginning-and-the<>bottom of the hollow cocoa-nut shell

2 Vatea is the Wakea of the Hawaiians, with a similar meaning and history.

Myths and Songs.

called by mortals the sun, is seen here in this upper world, the other eye, called by men the moon, shines in AvaikL (A contra dictory myth represents the sun and moon as living beings.)

IMAGINARY REPRESENTATION OF VATEA.

Compare with, this a remarkable picture of a fish-god, from Layard, in Smith V Dictionary of the Bible, p. 381 (central picture).

The land assigned by the Great Mother to Vatca was Te-papa-rairai, or TJie-thin-Iand. Another designation for his home was Te enua marama o Vatea, or The-bright-hind-of-VatM^ implying the perfect contrast between the brightness of mwntoy, or Avatea, and the utter gloom of Po, or night which is equivalent to Avaiki.

On another occasion Vari-ma-te-takere tore off a second bit from that same right side, and it became Tinirati, or ///- numerable, who, like his brother, had a second and fishy form.

Myths of Creation.

The sort of fish which composed his half fish body was of the sprat-kind. The Great Mother gave him the land of Motu- Tapu, or Sacred Isle as his own domain. 1 There were his celebrated ponds full of all kinds of fish. Tinirau was lord of the finny inhabitants of the sea, from the shark downwards.

Another day Vari-ma-te-takere took a bit off her left side, and it became Tango, or Support, who went to live at Enua-Kura, 2 or The-land-of-red-parrot-feathers*

A fourth child was produced from a bit of the same left side, and was named Tumuteanaoa, or Echo, whose home was Te-paraitea, or The-hollow-grey-rocks. Echo is represented as a female.