Its Names.

Archdeacon Samuel Williams called it an ahao. A Maori spelt it for me ahau. The word does not occur either in Williams's, or Colenso's, or Tregear's, or the Hawaiian, or Niue, or Mangarewa, or other dictionaries, which shows the instrument had nearly gone out of use. Hao in Maori = to do and round, to enclose, to shut in, to encircle as a fisherman draws in a net. This ahao draws together the gills of fishes, the top of a basket, and shuts in the contents. Hao is a word used for hard substances of bone; hahao = to put up in a basket; sao = to collect food; and totao = a sharp point. In Mangarewa ahao is to put into a basket, and taotaomu is a wooden implement used to collect fish out of a pond. Among the negroes of Assam, a closely allied race, dao is a sharp-pointed substance of wood or bone. In Niue a fish-spear was taohokaika; haohao is a fish with a beak, and pulu is cocoanut-husk. The Taranaki Maori expert, Kauri, called it a purupuru—-an instrument used for caulking purposes. Puru in Maori is a plug or cork—-to plug. In Mangaia puru is the fibre of cocoanut, used in caulking canoes to make them watertight. In Samoa bula (New Zealand Maori puru) is a kind of gum used as pitch in caulking canoes. It will be noticed that Maoris used their marlinspike exactly as did the English sailors—for caulking purposes. The European used tow and the Maori cocoanut-fibre or raupo; the European sailor used pitch, the Maori sailor used gum; and centuries