Children's Games show the Marks of Discarded
Religious Rites

(9) And the rhythmic grace of the poi dance, which is so little of a dance in our sense of the word that it can be performed sitting, must come down from the immemorial, doubtless, like so many games of the young, the imitation of some long-discarded religious rite. Many of the Maori children's plays and games are almost the same as those of Japanese children and those of European children: flying kites, skipping with a rope, the top, the hoop, the bullroarer, the giant's-stride swing, walking on stilts, throwing somersaults, hide-and-seek, ducks and drakes, counting out, hunt the slipper, knuckle-bone, and cat's cradle. The bullroarer has preserved only a little of its original religious significance; it is used to drive off spirits from a chief's body at a tangi. So, too, has the top; though chiefly an amusement for children, it is employed by the warriors to provide chorus for the dirge over their fellows slain in a battle they have lost. Kite-flying retained something of its serious purpose in its use for sending messages to another tribe, or as an omen-indicator and sorcery-weapon when blown across a page 207besieged pa. Whilst this is one of the few races whose children use the hoop that reveal its primal aim amongst adults; the warriors were accustomed to insult their fallen foe by stretching the tattooed skin of his thigh on a hoop and trundling it from man to man. So cat's cradle (whai) tells more of its primeval origin as it appears amongst the Maoris than amongst other races. It was doubtless an effort of palaeolithic man to represent a stage or dramatic exhibition with lightning changes of scene. For with the Maoris its various stages are called houses, each with a different name. According to White, in his "Ancient History of the Maori," it represents the drama of the creation. The game, under the name of whai, is found in many of the island groups, and the word seems also to imply something connected with witchcraft, a charm. There is another name for it in New Zealandmaui, which also means witchcraft. And tradition tells that the game was learned by Rongomai in the realms of Miru, the goddess of the under-world, who guards the gates of death, and has all the divinities of sorcery around her. He learned at the same time all the knowledge of the charms the Maoris had, and also the game of ti, which is played by Scotch boys under the name of "How many fingers do I hold up?"

(10) This derivation of these games from Po or the underworld indicates again origin from the long-nighted winter of the north. And that some of the scenes in the drama of cat's cradle were to represent the adventures of Maui, the northern culture-hero, and the Great Lady of Darkness, points in the same direction. The revival of the giant's-stride swing (moari) as a part of the Hauhau religion seems also to indicate that this children's game was in its origin religious. With skipping and throwing somersaults it was doubtless used by adults in primeval times as a method of paralysing the reasoning centres and inducing frenzy, like the whirling of the page 208dervishes and the old religious dances. Walking on stilts, again, is a game that belongs to Maori children, as it does to European; but Maori legend points back to serious use of it by the Arawa hero, Tamatekapua, in stealing from fruit trees. Religion, on the other hand, has preserved another relic of the old habit in the stilt-dance of the Marquesas group, which suggests singularly enough the stilt-dance of Yucatan on the neighbouring American coast.

(11) The Maoris, in fact, attribute the origin of their games as well as their music and dancing to two goddessesRaukatauri and Raukata-mea, the sisters of Mauithus pointing back to the primeval mother-governed household or matriarchate. It is as significant that the Ureweras, the comparatively peaceful blend of Polynesian and aboriginal, should have chosen twin brothers as the presiding deities of these; it looks as if the pre-Polynesians were farther removed, like the Aryans, from the most antique household based on mother-right than the South Asiatic Polynesians.

(12) There is doubtless much light yet to be thrown on the customs of submerged races and religions from the games of children. Some of them, such as, for example, knucklebone, or, as it is called by Scotch children, "the chucks" (from chuck, to toss, an old Teutonic word), with its use of round beach-pebbles, or "chuckie-stanes," probably goes back to palaeolithic times; though the English name of knuckle-bone, or dibs, shows in the use of bones of domestic animals an adaptation to the nomadic or agricultural stage. The toboggan (papareti), so favourite a sport with Maori boys, down a smooth grassy slope or a well-wet earth-slide, is doubtless a relic of snow-clad mountain-sides, probably in the Far North, perhaps in Europe. It belongs to Hawaii, also; there the sledge is called papa, but the game is holua, which is also a name for the winter north-wind.

(13) The extraordinary number of these games and plays page 209common to European and Maori children has no insignificant bearing on the kinship of the primeval population of Polynesia. For if we can imagine any conservatism that surpasses that of religion and of women, it is that of children in their games. They resist all innovations there with a fervour that is practically religious, because they are still in the dominantly emotional stage that represents the mental condition of early man, and that withstands the corrosive influence of reason or novelty.