Note 3 — Introduction.

In the folk-romance and in the mythological stories of Europe there are places that may not be entered, and there are women whom a man must not approach. There is Blue Beard’s Chamber; there is Danaë, and there is the Eithlinn of Celtic mythology. Polynesian romance has places that may not be entered, and women who must not be approached by men. And it has these instances in almost every story. Indeed, without the guarded maiden and the forbidden place a Polynesian story-teller would find it difficult to carry on. And one knows that when he was dealing with one or the other he was dealing with the life around him: the place was tapu,3 the maiden was tapu. And the place or the maiden was tapu simply because a king or a chief with the privilege of declaring tapu had so declared it. When we read the story of Ka-we-lu in The Arrow and the Swing, or of Kama in The Story of Ha-le-ma-no and the Princess Kama, we can easily see how, as the simplicity of tapu was forgotten, the maiden would be given a fantastic security like that of Danaë in her brazen tower, or like that of Eithlinn in her inaccessible island, and we can see how motives would be invented for keeping her apart: Danaë’s son and Eithlinn’s son are destined to slay their grandfathers. Every race has had tapu. But the Polynesians held to it and made it their single discipline. In these Polynesian stories we are at the very beginning of a romance that for Europeans has grown to be fraught with magic and mystery.