Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/380

 346 The Bird Cidt of Easter Is/and.

shave his head and paint it red, while the losers showed their grief unrestrainedly. The defeated hopu started at once to swim to the shore, while the winner, who was obliged to fast while the egg was in his possession, put it in a little basket, and going down to the landing rock dipped it into the sea ; the significance of the word hopu is " wash." He then tied the basket round his fore- head and was able to swim quickly, as the gods were with him. At this stage sometimes accidents occurred, for if the sea was rough an unlucky swimmer might be dashed on the rocks and killed ; in one instance, it was said, only one man escaped with his life, owing, as he reported, to his having been warned by Make-make not to make the attempt. When the hopu arrived on the mainland he handed over the egg to his employer, and a tangata-rongo- rongo tied round the arm which had taken it a piece of red tapa and also of a tree, now extinct, known as " gnau- gnau," reciting meanwhile the appropriate words. The finding was announced by a fire being lit on the landward side of the summit of Rano Kao on one of two sites, accord- ing to whether the Mata-toa came from the west or east side of the island.

Reference has been made to the carved rocks which ter- minate the village of Orongo; they are considerably weathered and require study in varying lights to realize the forms represented. By far the most numerous of these is the figure of a man with the head of a bird ; it is in a crouching attitude with the hands held up and is carved at every size and angle according to the surface of the rock. It can still be counted one hundred and eleven times and many instances must have disappeared. All knowledge of its meaning is lost ; the figure may have represented one of the egg gods, but it seems more probable that each one was a memorial to a bird-man, and this presumption is strengthened by the fact that in at least three of the carvings the hand is holding an egg. The history of