What does Hine-nui-te-pō look like? A case study of oral tradition, myth and literature in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This essay concerns Māui’s famous, canonical encounter, known only from Aotearoa (New Zealand), with one of Māori myth’s most important deities: Hine-nui-(i)-te-pō, ‘Great lady of the night’, queen of the underworld and, some would say, goddess of death. In particular, this essay traces Hine-nui-te-pō’s literary afterlife, focusing on formulaic descriptions oft her physiognomy from Te Rangikāheke’s “Tama a Rangi” (an 1849 manuscript) through to Karen Healey’s young-adult novel Guardian of the Dead (2010) and Barry Powell’s World Myth (2014). After introducing Hine-nui-te-pō and her place in Polynesian myth, I detail the textual history of the standard (and, I would argue, now formulaic) description of Hine-nui-te-pō’s physical form, comprising four recurring attributes: (i) eyes of, or like, greenstone (pounamu), (ii) hair of, or like, sea-kelp, (iii) teeth of, or like, obsidian and (iv) a mouth of, or like that of, a barracouta. First, I present a new transcription and translation of the relevant passage of Te Rangikāheke’s “Tama a Rangi”, taken from a facsimile of the manuscript. Then follows an account of the textual history of this passage, through George Grey’s various publications to Agathe Thornton’s 1992 edition and translation. I argue that subsequent editions and translations of this passage subtly misrepresent Te Rangikāheke’s handwritten Māori text. Next, I survey scholarly and literary receptions of this formulaic description, revealing that descriptions of Hine-nui-te-pō derive from, develop and indeed at times depart from Te Rangikāheke’s text; and that Hine-nui-te-pō has over time become a locus of progressive mythopoesis. On the one hand, she is a multiform from whom uniformity across different texts, genres, authors and languages should not be expected. On the other hand, I conclude, it is vital that we not forget Te Rangikāheke’s important but little-known account.