on it with the
chisel of Uetongo, and he entered the old chieftainess. The little birds
now screwed up their little mouths to keep back their laughter when
they saw him disappearing into the body of the giantess; their cheeks
swelled up and grew purple, and they almost choked with suppressed
emotion. At last the pied fantail could bear it no longer, and he
suddenly exploded with a loud guffaw. That woke the old woman, she
opened her eyes, and shut her jaws with a snap, cutting the hero clean
through the middle, so that his legs dropped out of her mouth. Thus died
Maui, but before he died he begat children, and sons were born to him,
and some of his descendants are alive to this day. That, according to
Maori tradition, is how death came into the world; for if only Maui had
passed safely through the jaws of the Goddess of Death, men would have
died no more and death itself would have been destroyed. Thus the Maoris
set down human mortality at the door of the pied fantail, since but for
his unseasonable merriment we might all have lived for ever.[50]

[50] Sir George Grey, _Polynesian Mythology_, pp. 56-58; John
White, _The Ancient History of the Maori_ (Wellington and
London, 1887-1889), ii. 98, 105-107. For another version of the
myth, told with some minor variations, see S. Percy Smith, _The
Lore of the Whare-w[=a]nanga_, Part I. (New Plymouth, N.Z.,
1913), pp. 145 _sq._, 176-178. For the identification of the
bird _tiwakawaka_ see E. Tregear, _Maori-Polynesian Comparative
Dictionary_, p. 519, _s.v._ "Tiwaiwaka."

Sec. 4. _The Beliefs of the Maoris concerning the Souls of the Dead_

When a chief died, a loud howl or wail announced the melancholy event,
and the neighbours flocked to the scene of death to testify their
sorrow. The wives and near relations, especially the women, of the
deceased displayed their anguish by cutting their faces, arms, legs, and
breasts with flints or shells till the blood flowed down in streams; it
was not wiped off, for the more the person of a mourner was covered with
clotted gore, the greater was esteemed his or her respect for the dead.
Sometimes relatives would hack off joints of their fingers as a token of
grief. Mourners likewise cut their hair, the men generally contenting
themselves with clipping or shaving it on one side only, from the
forehead to the neck. The eyes of the dead were closed by the nearest
relative; and the body dressed in the fines