MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 September 1939, Page 5

MAORI MEMORIES

' IJ SUPERSTITION (Maori and Pakeha). ■ (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) In all the geology of sea and earth in and around Ao Tea Roa there are no traces of the huge mythical monsters known to the Maori as Taniwha at sea, and Ngarara (roaring ribs) on land. This fact was facetiously referred to by the late Prime Minister, the Right Hon. R. J. Seddon, at an afterdinner function “as proof of the religious frauds of the Maori priests, who thus gained a hold upon their people and made them pay to be saved.” In reply Sir James Carroll, the Maori genius, said: “Precisely as your highly educated priests for thousands of years have done, and are still doing. We no longer believe in those fictions; but you ■still preach of the Whiro (devil) and his Ahi ka roa (everlasting fire).” It is true that superstition may be a wholesome restraint upon a primitive pleople as it undoubtedly was upon the ancient Maori. When the first white people came here they found these strangely simple, honest, hospitable people, whose only means of dealing with a wrong whether committed by accident or purposely. was Utu (reprisal). Since 1870 they have abandoned these barbarisms | in favour of mutual agreement (whaka rite).