Note 554 — Chapter VI · LUNAR CALENDARS AND THE WEEK

The Maori counted twenty-eight “nights” of the moon, including: 1. noni hope, the moon is in the reinga, or underworld; 4. he oho ata, the moon is visible; 5. ouenuku, it begins to rise a little way; 6. maweti, it rises still higher; 14. he atua, full; 19. he ohika, the moon begins to wane; 24. tanagaroa a roto, it sinks into the sea; 28. he o mutu, it disappears (Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, p. 177). To the Society Islanders the fifteenth day was omarae, or the moon with a round and full face; the thirtieth day, oterieo, was the time when the moon dies or is changed (Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i, 87 sq.). In the Hervey group several of the moon nights were sacred to the gods. The twenty-eighth day was called mauri—ghost; the twenty-ninth, omutu—ended; the thirtieth, otire o avaiki—lost in the depths of avaiki, or Hades (W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, London, 1876, p. 318). For a table of the days of the moon’s age in the Maori, Moriori, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Marquesan, and Rarotongan languages see Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, p. 666.