Maori Belief and History

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 926, 10 May 1957, Page 12

Maori Belief and History

POLYNESIAN MYTHOLOGY, by Sir George Grey, edited by W. W. Bird, illustrated by Russell Clark; Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd., 17/6.

(Reviewed by

Barry

Mitcalfe

HE old leatherbound Grey concealed a number of virtues from a popular audience, but the publishers have groomed this edition for its debut from the glass-case to the bedside table. Russell Clark’s custjacket makes a lively beginning, the spacious layout heightens the sense of quality; merely to look at this book is a pleasure. Grey’s classical style, with its sinewy periods, is in the best tradition of Maori oratory. It is suited not only to the subject, but also to the modern reader. Grey has no need now to apologise for "occasional simplicities and infelicities of expression."’ Except for the standardising of Grey’s Maori spelling and the improvement in order of chapters, the late Mr W. W. Bird’s editing is skilfully unobtrusive. I quibble with Grey’s preface and his title, Polynesian Mythology. Although he states "that probably to no other

person but myself would many of [the Maoris’] ancient chants and traditions have been imparted by their priests," it was an ex-road works foreman, Elsdon Best, who penetrated beyond the exoteric myths of Grey’s volume to the esoteric concept of Io and the abstract beginnings of the earth, from darkness and negation, through stages of will and desire, into substance. Buck mildly ridicules the school’ of Te Matorohanga, on whom Best relied, for its inconsistencies and transcriptions from the Christian concept of creation, but he does not question the concept of Io. Io, the father, Io, the fatherless, who could have no atua or image, who had no place in the common genealogy of gods down to men, puts the Rangi and Papa creation-myth beside Adam and his rib-bone-a delightful story, but little else. Yet with all due disrespect for one’s elders, I do not for one moment ‘suggest that Grey’s Polynesian Mythology is merely a_ collection of delightful stories-it is more than that, a work of scholarship, a shaft deep into the workings of Maori belief and history. Buck, even Best, followed this shaft and drew much from it. Grey’s account of the dissensions in Hawaiki and the

coming of the "fleet" should be read beside Buck’s version in The Coming of the Maori. The acid test of Grey’s scholarship and veracity is that he chose to publish the first edition in Maori at a time when the oral tradition was still strong enough to give the instant lie to any error in substance or in style. Polynesian Mythology has every right to sit alongside any de luxe edition of Greek myth and legend. In this country, it has prior right.