How This Series Began

As a very young lad, out of nappies, but not old enough for school, I was allowed to visit a neighbour within toddling distance, and on the same side of the road.

I can vaguely remember a few houses together where the ‘old’, [probably 20 to 30 year old] would gather all the kids from around and tell us stories.

Like all verbal histories, there is a great repetition of the important points of the story, to make sure it penetrated.

As with all stories, even the fish you caught last year, they grow with time.

Also, each teller of the tales would include things that he thought important, and this was complicated by the translation from one dialect of Maori, possibly into another dialect before it was translated into English.

One of the series that I most remember was of a Demi-God called Maui.

The stories of Maui are widespread throughout Polynesia, with the same backbone to the story, and very similar names and details.

Modern researchers have found that the Polynesian race, that covers from Hawaii in the North to New Zealand in the South, and the Tahitian group in the East, including the many Island between, all had myths of this same Demi-God, some had more and some myths has less, but the names and deeds of the heroes were virtually the same.

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The latest theory seems to be that the Polynesian people came from India, migrated to Malaya, around the Straits of Sunda, before being driven away from the Asiatic coasts by the Malays.

The Maui legends form one of the strongest links in the mythological chain of evidence which binds the scattered inhabitants of the Pacific.

The Polynesian people are not a very clannish people, and for some centuries they have not been in the habit of visiting each other, usually, it would have been on a food-finding mission, inviting the captives home for dinner.

They had no written language, and picture writing of any kind is exceedingly rare throughout Polynesia, and yet in physical traits, national customs, domestic habits and language as well as traditions and myths, the different inhabitants of the islands of Polynesian are as near of kin as the cousins of the United States and Great Britain.

Included in one legend, Maui made a voyage after overcoming a sea monster, visiting the Tongan Islands, the Tahitian Islands, Vai-I or Hawaii and the Paumotu Islands, he then went on to U-Peru, which may have been today’s Peru.

The New Zealand Maori claim Maui as an ancestor of their most ancient tribes and sometimes class him among the most ancient of their Gods.

The noted green-stone god of the Maoris of New Zealand, Po-tiki, may well be considered a representation of Maui-Tiki Tiki, who was sometimes called Maui-po-tiki.

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The myths all agree that Maui was the youngest of four brothers, and was the only one granted special powers.

[Info from](Sir George Grey, 3rd Governor of NZ November 1845 to January 1854
And December 1861 to February 1868.
11th Premier of New Zealand. October 1877 to October 1879.)

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/myths-and-legends-of-new-zealand-intro

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/children-of-heaven-and-earth-how-the-heavens-were-separated-from-the-earth

https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/children-of-heaven-and-earth-part-2

with thanks to son-of-satire for the banner