f the
dangers he will have to encounter,--the thunderbolt when her father
speaks, and the tasks her father will lay upon him. Before he goes he
accordingly calls the beasts and the birds together; he slays oxen to
feed them; he tells them the tests he is about to undergo, and takes
promises from them to accomplish the things that trouble him. Obedient
to his wife, he displays great humility to his father-in-law; and by
the aid of the lower animals he comes triumphant out of every trial. The
beasts with their tusks plough up the spacious fields of heaven; the
beasts and birds uproot the giant trees; from the Crocodile Lake the
crocodiles themselves bring the thousand spades; between cattle which
are exactly alike the cattle-fly distinguishes the cows from the calves;
and the little fly, settling on the nose of the heroine's mother,
enables the hero to point her out among her daughters. The wife's father
is astonished, and gives his daughter anew to the hero to be his wife,
dismissing them with a dower of oxen, slaves and money.[203]

It will be observed that the adventures undergone by Andrianoro in
heaven are very different from those of the Maori heroes. Tawhaki and
Tini-rau have certainly to submit to hardships and indignities before
they can be reunited to their wives; and they perform actions of
superhuman power. But these actions are not performed as the condition
of reunion; nor are the tasks and the indignities laid upon them by any
parental ogre. In fact the parental ogre is as conspicuous by his
absence from the New Zealand stories as he is by his presence in those
of Andrianoro and the Marquis of the Sun. How is this to be explained?
The reason seems to lie in the different organization of society under
which the tale attained its present form in either case. At an early
period of civilization, kinship is reckoned exclusively through the
mother: even the father is in no way related to his children. This is a
stage hardly ever found complete in all its consequences, but of which
the traces remain in the customs and in the lore of many nations who
have long since passed from it, becoming, as we might expect, fainter
and fewer as it recedes into the distance. Such traces are abundant in
Maori tradition; and they point to a comparatively recent emergence
from female kinship. Among these traces is the omission of the heavy
father from the stories before us. Tango-tango and Hine-te-iwaiwa were
both maidens of more t