Reviewer: Stuart D. Scott sscott@acsu.buffalo.edu

Polynesia's rich tradition of oral history and mythology has hardly suffered from scholarly neglect. Among the many critically important works one could cite Luomala's Voices on the Wind, Dixon's Mythology of Oceania, Grey's Polynesian Mythology, plus a host of regional and island group studies of legend, folklore and myth. And from the perspective of the publishing industry, the field has picked up in recent years as evidenced by an increased number of requests from the market of those who enjoy reading myths as stories, new age or otherwise. As an added item of evidence, current popular literature includes the quarterly Parabola - The Magazine of Myth and Tradition. The reprinting of Andersen's Myths and Legends of the Polynesians (originally published in 1928, London: George G. Harrap) follows Dover's long standing interest in the republication of standard works on myths, legends, art history, anthropology and ethnology. Among the titles in their reprint series are: Myths and Folk Tales of Ireland (Curtin), Ozark Magic and Folklore (Randolph), Masks of Black Africa (Segy) and Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (Stephens).

Danish-born Johannes Carl Andersen arrived with his family in Christchurch, New Zealand at the age of two. In 1918 he became the first librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library, a post he held until his retirement in 1937. He served on the Council of the Polynesian Society and was the editor of its journal for twenty- two years. Like his contemporaries Elsdon Best, Sir Peter Buck and H.D. Skinner, Andersen took a scholarly interest in the life of the Maori and wrote and lectured widely on New Zealand history and ethnography. Myths and Legends of the Polynesians was Andersen's contribution to historical ethnology, i.e., the use of language, tradition and genealogy in the search for Polynesian origins. Included are the history and deeds of ancient native deities (Tangaroa, Maui, Tane, Pele) and stories of the origin of cultural practices (tattooing), cultivated foodstuffs (kumara) and the creation of Man. The book is extensively illustrated with archival photographs of oceanic ethnography and art work illustrative of Polynesian mythology.

Dover has reissued Myths and Legends of Polynesia in full, as originally published nearly 70 years ago. Andersen's book thus dates from a time during the first half of the twentieth century when scholars were debating the peopling of the Pacific on traditional evidence, that is, prior to the advent of archaeology and more sophisticated linguistic analyses.The author sought to give a scientific tone by reviewing and rejecting some of the earlier attempts to account for the colonization of Polynesia and by including parenthetical comments of his own on the value to anthropology of selected word comparisons between islands or other traditional usages. From today's perspective that approach is outdated. Andersen, moreover, is re-tellingthe stories, for the most part without including original texts, and he makes little if any attempt to distinguish "myth" from "legend." The reprinting of Myths and Legends of Polynesia will be valuable in the history of Oceanic ethnology, as in the case of other studies, copies of which are no longer easily available. Modern scholarship, however, would have profited more by a revised and edited version with updated cultural contexts for drawing comparisons and correlations.