Page:Maori Division of Time.djvu/16

12 but how they managed either this or the year of thirteen months to correspond with the division by seasons, or with the sidereal year, I am not informed." Fornander traces the Polynesian year back to Asia. He also tells us that the Hawaiian year was one of twelve months of thirty days each, and that five extra days were intercalated at the end of the month called Welehu, which days were dedicated to the festival of the god Lono, the Rongo of Maori myth. Hewitt, in his Primitive Traditional History, mentions a three-year-cycle system that obtained in India in past times, among the Anu and other folk. This cycle had four divisions of ten months each. He claims that this institution was carried into Europe, and that a survival of it exists at Carnac, in Brittany, in the well-known ten rows of stones at that place.

In the far north of our North Island the commencement of the Rigel year was marked by a three-days festival. In the districts where the Pleiades year was followed a similar festival was held when that group appeared on the eastern horizon in the early morn, and such appearance was greeted by women with song and tears. The Rev. R. Taylor, whose book Te Ika a Maui contains much matter collected in the far North, wrote: "The year commences with the first new moon after the star Puanga is seen in the morning, which is in June"—or May, as he states in his little Maori-English dictionary.

Tutakangahau, of Tuhoe, clearly explained the fact that in the Matatua district the appearance of the Pleiades on the eastern horizon before sunrise was the sign awaited as a token of the new year. He made a peculiar statement that looks as though the year in that district commenced, or sometimes commenced, in the middle of a lunar month. If this was so it was a very singular procedure. He remarked that each month had thirty nights, but that the first month, Pipiri, had fifteen nights only "of its own"; its other fifteen nights formed half of the second month, Hongonoi. Hongonoi was composed of these fifteen nights and fifteen others "of its own." The third and following months were made up in a similar manner. Unfortunately, I lost the opportunity of obtaining further light on the subject, and so am still in the dark as to what the old man meant. He was a man of much knowledge, and the most trustworthy of authorities on old-time lore. The dull northern mind is to blame for my inability to explain these exasperating and elusive months.

In his Essay on the Native Race Colenso says: "Their year commenced with spring [?], to which, and to the proper planting season, they were guided by the rising of certain constellations, particularly of the Pleiades and of Orion; by the flowering of certain trees, especially a red-flowered creeper (Metrosideros sp.); by the sprouting of ferns, principally of the rauaruhe (Pteris esculenta); by the mating, moulting, and change of note of birds; by the singing of insects; and by the arrival of two migratory cuckoos." The word "spring" in the above looks like a slip of the pen; one would scarcely describe June in New Zealand as a spring month.

The Rev. W. Gill, in his Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, tells us that "The reappearance of the Pleiades above the horizon at sunset—i.e., the beginning of a new year—was in many islands