Legends Of Ma-ui-a Demi God Of Polynesia, And Of His Mother Hina Part 2

They had caught many fine fish and were satisfied, so thought to paddle homeward; but their younger brother plead with them to go out, far out, to the deeper seas and permit him to cast his hook. He said he wanted larger and better fish than any they had captured.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Spearing Fish.]

So they paddled to their outermost fis.h.i.+ng grounds--but this did not satisfy Maui--

"Farther out on the waters, O! my brothers, I seek the great fish of the sea."

It was evidently easier to work for him than to argue with him--therefore far out in the sea they went. The home land disappeared from view; they could see only the outstretching waste of waters. Maui urged them out still farther. Then he drew his magic hook from under his malo or loin-cloth. The brothers wondered what he would do for bait. The New Zealand legend says that he struck his nose a mighty blow until the blood gushed forth. When this blood became clotted, he fastened it upon his hook and let it down into the deep sea.

Down it went to the very bottom and caught the under world. It was a mighty fish--but the brothers paddled with all their might and main and Maui pulled in the line. It was hard rowing against the power which held the hook down in the sea depths--but the brothers became enthusiastic over Maui's large fish, and were generous in their strenuous endeavors.

Every muscle was strained and every paddle held strongly against the sea that not an inch should be lost. There was no sudden leaping and darting to and fro, no "give" to the line; no "tremble" as when a great fish would shake itself in impotent wrath when held captive by a hook. It was simply a struggle of tense muscle against an immensely heavy dead weight. To the brothers there came slowly the feeling that Maui was in one of his strange moods and that something beyond their former experiences with their tricky brother was coming to pa.s.s.

At last one of the brothers glanced backward. With a scream of intense terror he dropped his paddle. The others also looked. Then each caught his paddle and with frantic exertion tried to force their canoe onward.

Deep down in the heavy waters they pushed their paddles. Out of the great seas the black, ragged head of a large island was rising like a fish--it seemed to be chasing them through the boiling surf. In a little while the water became shallow around them, and their canoe finally rested on a black beach.

Maui for some reason left his brothers, charging them not to attempt to cut up this great fish. But the unwise brothers thought they would fill the canoe with part of this strange thing which they had caught. They began to cut up the back and put huge slices into their canoe. But the great fish--the island--shook under the blows and with mighty earthquake shocks tossed the boat of the brothers, and their canoe was destroyed.

As they were struggling in the waters, the great fish devoured them. The island came up more and more from the waters--but the deep gashes made by Maui's brothers did not heal--they became the mountains and valleys stretching from sea to sea.

White of New Zealand says that Maui went down into the underworld to meet his great ancestress, who was one side dead and one side alive.

From the dead side he took the jaw bone, made a magic hook, and went fis.h.i.+ng. When he let the hook down into the sea, he called:

"Take my bait. O Depths!

Confused you are. O Depths!

And coming upward."

Thus he pulled up Ao-tea-roa--one of the large islands of New Zealand.

On it were houses, with people around them. Fires were burning. Maui walked over the island, saw with wonder the strange men and the mysterious fire. He took fire in his hands and was burned. He leaped into the sea, dived deep, came up with the other large island on his shoulders. This island he set on fire and left it always burning. It is said that the name for New Zealand given to Captain Cook was Te ika o Maui, "The fish of Maui." Some New Zealand natives say that he fished up the island on which dwelt "Great Hina of the Night," who finally destroyed Maui while he was seeking immortality.

One legend says that Maui fished up apparently from New Zealand the large island of the Tongas. He used this chant:

"O Tonga-nui!

Why art Thou Sulkily biting, biting below?

Beneath the earth The power is felt, The foam is seen, Coming.

O thou loved grandchild Of Tangaroa-meha."

This is an excellent poetical description of the great fish delaying the quick hard bite. Then the island comes to the surface and Maui, the beloved grandchild of the Polynesian G.o.d Ka.n.a.loa, is praised.

It was part of one of the legends that Maui changed himself into a bird and from the heavens let down a line with which he drew up land, but the line broke, leaving islands rather than a mainland. About two hundred lesser G.o.ds went to the new islands in a large canoe. The greater G.o.ds punished them by making them mortal.

Turner, in his book on Samoa, says there were three Mauis, all brothers.

They went out fis.h.i.+ng from Rarotonga. One of the brothers begged the "G.o.ddess of the deep rocks" to let his hooks catch land. Then the island Manahiki was drawn up. A great wave washed two of the Mauis away. The other Maui found a great house in which eight hundred G.o.ds lived. Here he made his home until a chief from Rarotonga drove him away. He fled into the sky, but as he leaped he separated the land into two islands.

Other legends of Samoa say that Tangaroa, the great G.o.d, rolled stones from heaven. One became the island Savaii, the other became Upolu. A G.o.d is sometimes represented as pa.s.sing over the ocean with a bag of sand.

Wherever he dropped a little sand islands sprang up.

Payton, the earnest and honored missionary of the New Hebrides Islands, evidently did not know the name Mauitikitiki, so he spells the name of the fisherman Ma-ts.h.i.+-kts.h.i.+-ki, and gives the myth of the fis.h.i.+ng up of the various islands. The natives said that Maui left footprints on the coral reefs of each island where he stood straining and lifting in his endeavors to pull up each other island. He threw his line around a large island intending to draw it up and unite it with the one on which he stood, but his line broke. Then he became angry and divided into two parts the island on which he stood. This same Maui is recorded by Mr.

Payton as being in a flood which put out one volcano--Maui seized another, sailed across to a neighboring island and piled it upon the top of the volcano there, so the fire was placed out of reach of the flood.

In the Hervey Group of the Tahitian or Society Islands the same story prevails and the natives point out the place where the hook caught and a print was made by the foot in the coral reef. But they add some very mythical details. Maui's magic fish hook is thrown into the skies, where it continuously hangs, the curved tail of the constellation which we call Scorpio. Then one of the G.o.ds becoming angry with Maui seized him and threw him also among the stars. There he stays looking down upon his people. He has become a fixed part of the scorpion itself.

The Hawaiian myths sometimes represent Maui as trying to draw the islands together while fis.h.i.+ng them out of the sea. When they had pulled up the island of Kauai they looked back and were frightened. They evidently tried to rush away from the new monster and thus broke the line. Maui tore a side out of the small crater Kaula when trying to draw it to one of the other islands. Three aumakuas, three fishes supposed to be spirit-G.o.ds, guarded Kaula and defeated his purpose. At Hawaii Cocoanut Island broke off because Maui pulled too hard. Another place near Hilo on the large island of Hawaii where the hook was said to have caught is in the Wailuku river below Rainbow Falls.

Maui went out from his home at Kauiki, fis.h.i.+ng with his brothers. After they had caught some fine fish the brothers desired to return, but Maui persuaded them to go out farther. Then when they became tired and determined to go back, he made the seas stretch out and the sh.o.r.es recede until they could see no land. Then drawing the magic hook, he baited it with the Alae or sacred mud hen belonging to his Mother Hina.

Queen Liliuokalani's family chant has the following reference to this myth:

"Maui longed for fish for Hina-akeahi (Hina of the fire, his mother), Go hence to your father, There you will find line and hook.

Manaiakalani is the hook.

Where the islands are caught, The ancient seas are connected.

The great bird Alae is taken, The sister bird, Of that one of the hidden fire of Maui."

Maui evidently had no scruples against using anything which would help him carry out his schemes. He indiscriminately robbed his friends and the G.o.ds alike.

Down in the deep sea sank the hook with its struggling bait, until it was seized by "the land under the water."

But Hina the mother saw the struggle of her sacred bird and hastened to the rescue. She caught a wing of the bird, but could not pull the Alae from the sacred hook. The wing was torn off. Then the fish gathered around the bait and tore it in pieces. If the bait could have been kept entire, then the land would have come up in a continent rather than as an island. Then the Hawaiian group would have been unbroken. But the bait broke--and the islands came as fragments from the under world.

Maui's hook and canoe are frequently mentioned in the legends. The Hawaiians have a long rock in the Wailuku river at Hilo which they call Maui's canoe. Different names were given to Maui's canoe by the Maoris of New Zealand. "Vine of Heaven," "Prepare for the North," "Land of the Receding Sea." His fish hook bore the name "Plume of Beauty."

On the southern end of Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, there is a curved ledge of rocks extending out from the coast. This is still called by the Maoris "Maui's fish-hook," as if the magic hook had been so firmly caught in the jaws of the island that Maui could not disentangle it, but had been compelled to cut it off from his line.

There is a large stone on the sea coast of North Kohala on the island of Hawaii which the Hawaiians point out as the place where Maui's magic hook caught the island and pulled it through the sea.

In the Tonga Islands, a place known as Hounga is pointed out by the natives as the spot where the magic hook caught in the rocks. The hook itself was said to have been in the possession of a chief-family for many generations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Here are the Canoes.]

Another group of Hawaiian legends, very incomplete, probably referring to Maui, but ascribed to other names, relates that a fisherman caught a large block of coral. He took it to his priest. After sacrificing, and consulting the G.o.ds, the priest advised the fisherman to throw the coral back into the sea with incantations. While so doing this block became Hawaii-loa. The fis.h.i.+ng continued and blocks of coral were caught and thrown back into the sea until all the islands appeared. Hints of this legend cling to other island groups as well as to the Hawaiian Islands.

Fornander credits a fisherman from foreign lands as thus bringing forth the Hawaiian Islands from the deep seas. The reference occurs in part of a chant known as that of a friend of Paao--the priest who is supposed to have come from Samoa to Hawaii in the eleventh century. This priest calls for his companions:

"Here are the canoes. Get aboard.

Come along, and dwell on Hawaii with the green back.

A land which was found in the ocean, A land thrown up from the sea-- From the very depths of Ka.n.a.loa, The white coral, in the watery caves, That was caught on the hook of the fisherman."

The G.o.d Ka.n.a.loa is sometimes known as a ruler of the under-world, whose land was caught by Maui's hook and brought up in islands. Thus in the legends the thought has been perpetuated that some one of the ancestors of the Polynesians made voyages and discovered islands.

In the time of Umi, King of Hawaii, there is the following record of an immense bone fish-hook, which was called the "fish-hook of Maui:"

"In the night of Muku (the last night of the month), a priest and his servants took a man, killed him, and fastened his body to the hook, which bore the name Manai-a-ka-lani, and dragged it to the heiau (temple) as a 'fish,' and placed it on the altar."

This hook was kept until the time of Kamehameha I. From time to time he tried to break it, and pulled until he perspired.

Peapea, a brother of Kaahumanu, took the hook and broke it. He was afraid that Kamehameha would kill him. Kaahumanu, however, soothed the King, and he pa.s.sed the matter over. The broken bone was probably thrown away.

III.