Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/89

Rh than anywhere else. The word is Polynesian, and singularly resembles in sound and meaning the to ebah of the ancient Hebrews. It has a good and a bad meaning, or rather it may apply to a sacred thing or to a wicked one. A cemetery, being consecrated ground, would be tabu, or sacred, and to fight there would be tabu, or wicked. Our English word 'tabooed' (forbidden) comes from the Polynesian one.

"It would take too long to describe all the operations of tabu as it formerly prevailed through Polynesia and still exists in some of the islands, and especially in the Marquesas. There were two kinds of tabu, one of them permanent, the other temporary. The permanent tabu was a sort of traditional or social rule, and applied to everybody. All grounds and buildings dedicated to any idol or god were tabu, andtherefore became places of refuge to men fleeing from an enemy, exactly like the Cities of Refuge mentioned in the Bible. It was tabu to touch the person of a chief or any article belonging to him, or eat anything he had touched. In the Tonga Islands it was tabu to speak the name of father or mother or of father-in-law or mother-in-law, to touch them, or to eat in their presence except with the back turned, when they were constructively supposed to be absent.