e plants to grow
in spring and flourish in summer. It is the self-same process that is
pictured in the sonorous hexameters:--

"Tum pater omnipotens fecundis imbribus Aether
Coniugis in gremium laetae descendit, et omnes
Magnus alit, magno commixtus corpore, fetus."

But in the beginning Heaven lay close to the Earth and all was dim
and dark. There was life but not light. So their children, tired of
groping about within narrow and gloomy limits, conspired together
to force them asunder and let in the day. These were Tu, the
scarlet-belted god of men and war, Tane, the forest god, and their
brother, the sea-god. With them joined the god of cultivated food,
such as the kumara, and the god of food that grows wild--such as the
fern-root. The conspirators cut great poles with which to prop up
Heaven. But the father and mother were not to be easily separated.
They clung to each other despite the efforts of their unnatural sons.
Then Tane, the tree-god, standing on head and hands, placed his feet
against Heaven and, pushing hard, forced Rangi upwards. In that
attitude the trees, the children of Tane, remain to this day. Thus was
the separation accomplished, and Rangi and Papa must for ever remain
asunder. Yet the tears of Heaven still trickle down and fall as
dew-drops upon the face of his spouse, and the mists that rise in the
evening from her bosom are the sighs of regret which she sends up to
her husband on high.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sir George Grey, _Polynesian Mythology_.]

Vengeance, however, fell upon the conspirators. A sixth brother had
had nothing to do with their plot. This was Tawhiri-Matea, the god
of winds and storms. He loyally accompanied his father to the realms
above, whence he descended on his rebel brothers in furious tempests.
The sea-god fled to the ocean, where he and his children dwell
as fishes. The two gods of plant-food hid in the Earth, and she,
forgiving mother that she was, sheltered them in her breast. Only Tu,
the god of mankind, stayed erect and undaunted. So it is that the
winds and storms make war to this day upon men, wrecking their canoes,
tearing down their houses and fences and ruining all their handiwork.
Not only does man hold out against these attacks, but, in revenge for
the cowardly desertion of Tu by his weaker brethren, men, his people,
prey upon the fish and upon the plants that give food whether wild or
cultivated.

Space will scarcely permit even a reference to other Ma