Te Hunahuna-a-Po

(Ngati-Apa version.)

The hinau is divided at some dis-[unclear: ce]the ground and the branch [unclear: ards] the rising sun is the peka[unclear: ae] (male branch) and that to the [unclear: ing] sun is ihepeka-wahine, (fe-[unclear: ale] (finch). The husband goes [unclear: th] his wife to the tree and breaks [unclear: ing] or [unclear: piece] of bark from the peka[unclear: e] or peka-wahine, according to [unclear: hether]a son or daughter is desired. [unclear: u] result of this, so says the Ngati-Apa, is always satisfactory.

The cult of the Phallic symbol has never, I think, been traced to New Zealand, but the foregoing items will serve to prove that most ancient form of worship to have been introduced here at some remote period, either by the ancestors of the present race of natives some twenty generations ago, or by their predecessors in the days of Tiwakawaka or Maki, or Toi. There is no doubt that phallic worship was one of the earliest forms of religion practised by primitive man and even now it retains a strong hold among more than one cultured nation of the East. The traces of it are even yet noted in Western Europe, and it has probably been carried from the Asiatic fatherland by the ancestors of the Maori, far and wide over the great ocean during many centuries of wandering, and finally expires a To Iho o Kataka of the Urewera and Te Hunr huna-a-Po of the descendants of Apa of old.