m the South Pacific_, pp. 3
_sqq._; _id._, "Mangaia (Hervey Islands)," _op. cit._ pp. 348
_sq._ As to Rongo and Tangaroa, see E. Tregear,
_Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary_ (Wellington, N.Z.,
1891), pp. 424 _sq._, 463 _sq._, _svv._ "Rongo" and "Tangaroa."

[21] W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, pp.
51-58.

[22] W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, p.
58-60.

[23] W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, pp.
61-63.

But besides the divine or heroic figures of more or less anthropomorphic
type, which the Hervey Islanders recognised in common with the rest of
the Polynesians, we may distinguish in their mythology traces of that
other and probably older stage of thought in which the objects of
religious reverence are rather animals than men or beings modelled in
the image of man. We have seen that this early stage of religion was
well preserved in Samoa down to the time when the islands fell under the
observation of Europeans, and that it was probably a relic of
totemism,[24] which at an earlier period may perhaps have prevailed
generally among the ancestors of the Polynesians. In the Hervey Islands
there was a god called Tonga-iti, who appeared visibly in the form of
black and white spotted lizards.[25] Another deity named Tiaio took
possession of the body of the large white shark, the terror of these
islanders, and he had a small sacred grove (_marae_) set apart for his
worship. It is said that this shark-god was a former king of Mangaia,
who in the pride of his heart had defiled the sacred district of Keia,
the favourite haunt of the gods, by wearing some beautiful scarlet
hibiscus flowers in his ears. Now anything red was forbidden in that
part of the island as being offensive to the gods; and even the beating
of bark-cloth was prohibited there, lest the repose of the gods should
be disturbed by the noise. Hence an angry priest knocked the proud and
impious king on the head, and the blood of the slain monarch flowed into
a neighbouring stream, where it was drunk by a great fresh-water eel. So
the spirit of the dead king entered into the eel, but subsequently,
pursuing its way to the sea, the spirit forsook the eel and took
possession of the shark.[26] Nevertheless he continued occasionally to
appear to his worshippers in the form of an eel; for we are told that in
the old heathen days, if a huge eel were caught in a net