The number seven has no significance in Polynesian tradition; the
number eight has. It just happened that the number of Ma-ui’s deeds
that had interest for me as a story-teller was seven. Fornander has
only short and passing notices of Ma-ui, and all the material for the
stories given here has been taken from Mr. W. D. Westervelt’s valuable
Ma-ui the Demi-God. Ma-ui is a hero for all the Polynesians, and Mr.
Westervelt tells us that either complete or fragmentary Ma-ui legends
are found in the single islands and island groups of Aneityum, Bowditch
or Fakaofa, Efate, Fiji, Fotuna, Gilbert, Hawaii, Hervey, Huahine,
Mangaia, Manihiki, Marquesas, Marshall, Nauru, New Hebrides, New
Zealand, Samoa, Savage, Tahiti or Society, Tauna, Tokelau, and Tonga.
Ma-ui is, in short, a Pan-Polynesian hero, and it is as a
Pan-Polynesian hero that I have treated him, giving his legend from
other sources than those that are purely Hawaiian. However, I have
tried to make Hawaii the background for all the stories. Note that
Ma-ui’s position in his family is the traditional position for a
Polynesian hero—he is the youngest of his brothers, but, as in the case
of other heroes of the Polynesians, he becomes the leader of his
family.
Ma-ui’s mother was Hina. She is distinguished from the numerous Hinas
of Polynesian tradition by being “Hina-a-ke-ahi,” “Hina-of-the-Fire.” I
follow the New Zealand tradition that Mr. Westervelt gives in telling
how Ma-ui was thrown into the sea by his mother and how the jelly-fish
took care of him. Ma-ui’s throwing the heavy spear at the house is also
out of New Zealand. His overthrowing of the two posts is out of the
Hawaiian tradition. But in that tradition it is suggested that his two
uncles were named “Tall Post” and “Short Post.” They had been the
guardians of the house, and young Ma-ui had to struggle with them to
win a place for himself in the house. Ma-ui’s taking away invisibility
from the birds and letting the people see the singers is out of the
Hawaiian tradition. So is Ma-ui’s kite-flying. The Polynesian people
all delighted in kite-flying, but the Hawaiians are unique in giving a
kite to a demi-god. The incantation beginning “O winds, winds of
Wai-pio” is Hawaiian; the other incantation, “Climb up, climb up,” is
from New Zealand.
The fishing up of the islands is supposed by scholars to be a folk-lore
account of the discovery of new islands after the Polynesian tribes had
put off from Indonesia. The story that I give is mainly Hawaiian—it is
out of Mr. Westervelt’s book, of course—but I have borrowed from the
New Zealand and the Tongan accounts too; the fish-hook made from the
jaw-bone of his ancestress is out of the New Zealand tradition, and the
chant “O Island, O great Island” is Tongan.
The story of Ma-ui’s snaring the sun is Hawaiian, and the scene of
this, the greatest exploit in Polynesian tradition, is on the great
Hawaiian mountain Haleakala. The detail about the nooses of the ropes
that Ma-ui uses—that they were made from the hair of his sister—is out
of the Tahitian tradition as given by Gill.
The Hawaiian story about Ma-ui’s finding fire is rather tame; he forces
the alae or the mud-hen to give the secret up to him. I have added to
the Hawaiian story the picturesque New Zealand story of his getting
fire hidden in her nails from his ancestress in the lower world. There
is an Hawaiian story, glanced at by Fornander, in which Ma-ui obtains
fire by breaking open the head of his eldest brother.
The story of Ma-ui and Kuna Loa, the Long Eel, as I give it, is partly
out of the Hawaiian, partly out of the New Zealand tradition, and there
is in it, besides, a reminiscence of a story from Samoa. All of these
stories are given in Mr. Westervelt’s book. That Kuna Loa tried to
drown Ma-ui’s mother in her cave—that is Hawaiian; that Hina was driven
to climb a bread-fruit tree to get away from the Long Eel—that is
derived from the Samoan story. And the transformation of the pieces of
Kuna Loa into eels, sea monsters, and fishes is out of the New Zealand
tradition about Ma-ui. “When the writer was talking with the natives
concerning this part of the old legend,” says Mr. Westervelt, “they
said, ‘Kuna is not a Hawaiian word. It means something like a snake or
a dragon, something we do not have in these islands.’ This, they
thought, made the connection with the Hina legend valueless until they
were shown that Tuna (or Kuna) was the New Zealand name of the reptile
which attacked Hina and struck her with his tail like a crocodile, for
which Ma-ui killed him. When this was understood, the Hawaiians were
greatly interested to give the remainder of the legend, and compare it
with the New Zealand story.” “This dragon,” Mr. Westervelt goes on,
“may be a remembrance of the days when the Polynesians were supposed to
dwell by the banks of the River Ganges in India, when crocodiles were
dangerous enemies and heroes saved families from their destructive
depredations.” Mrs. A. P. Taylor of Honolulu writes me in connection
with this passage: “There is a spring in the Palama district in
Honolulu called Kuna-wai (‘Eel of Water’). In Hawaiian, kuna-kuna means
eczema, a skin disease.”
The story of the search that Ma-ui’s brother made for his sister is
from New Zealand. Ma-ui’s brother is named Ma-ui Mua and Rupe. His
sister is Hina-te-ngaru-moana, “Hina, the daughter of the Ocean.”
The splendidly imaginative story of how Ma-ui strove to win immortality
for men is from New Zealand. The Goblin-goddess with whom Ma-ui
struggles is Hina-nui-te-po, “Great Hina of the Night,” or “Hina, Great
Lady of Hades.” According to the New Zealand mythology she was the
daughter and the wife of Kane, the greatest of the Polynesian gods.
There seems to be a reminiscence of the myth that they once possessed
in common with the New Zealanders in the fragmentary tale that the
Hawaiians have about Ma-ui striving to tear a mountain apart. “He
wrenched a great hole in the side. Then the elepaio bird sang and the
charm was broken. The cleft in the mountain could not be enlarged. If
the story could be completed it would not be strange if the death of
Ma-ui came with his failure to open the path through the mountain.” So
Mr. Westervelt writes.
The Ma-ui stories have flowed over into Melanesia, and there is a
Fijian story given in Lorimer Fison’s Tales of Old Fiji, in which
Ma-ui’s fishing is described. Ma-ui, in that story, is described as the
greatest of the gods; he has brothers, and he has two sons with him.
With his sons he fishes up the islands of Ata, Tonga, Haabai, Vavau,
Niua, Samoa, and Fiji. Ma-ui’s sons depart from the Land of the Gods
and seize upon the islands that their father had fished up. Then
Disease and Death come to the islands that the rebel gods, Ma-ui’s
sons, have seized. Afterwards Ma-ui sent to them “some of the sacred
fire of Bulotu.”