At one time students of mankind, when they found a myth in Hawaii corresponding to the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, or an Aztec poem of tender longing in absence, or a story of the deluge, were wont to conjecture how these could have been carried over from Greek or Elizabethan or Hebraic sources, or whether they did not afford evidence of a time when all branches of the human race dwelt together with a common fund of sentiment and tradition.  But this standpoint has been abandoned, and it is recognized that the human mind and the outside world are essentially alike the world over; that the mind everywhere acts on the same principles; and that, ignoring the local, incidental, and eccentric, we find similar laws of growth among all peoples.

The number of things which can stimulate the human mind is somewhat definite and limited.  Among them, for example, is death.  This happens everywhere, and the death of a dear one may cause the living to imagine ways of being reunited.  The story of Orpheus and Eurydice may thus arise spontaneously and perpetually, wherever death and affection exist.  Or, there may be a separation from home and friends, and the mind runs back in distress and longing over the happy past, and the state of consciousness aroused is as definite a fact among savages as among the civilized.  A beautiful passage in Homer represents Helen looking out on the Greeks from the wall of Troy and saying: 

And now behold I all the other glancing-eyed Achaians, whom well I could discern and tell their names; but two captains of the host can I not see, even Kastor tamer of horses and Polydukes the skilful boxer, mine own brethren whom the same mother bare.  Either they came not in the company from lovely Lakedaimon; or they came hither indeed in their seafaring ships, but now will not enter into the battle of the warriors, for fear of the many scornings and revilings that are mine.[261]

When this passage is thus stripped of its technical excellence by a prose translation, we may compare it with the following New Zealand lament composed by a young woman who was captured on the island of Tuhua and carried to a mountain from which she could see her home: 

My regret is not to be expressed.  Tears, like a spring, gush from my eyes.  I wonder whatever is Tu Kainku [her lover] doing, he who deserted me.  Now I climb upon the ridge of Mount Parahaki, whence is clear the view of the island of Tuhua.  I see with regret the lofty Tanmo where dwells [the chief] Tangiteruru.  If I were there, the shark’s tooth would hang from my ear.  How fine, how beautiful should I look!...  But enough of this; I must return to my rags and to my nothing at all.[262]

The situation of the two women in this case is not identical, and it would be possible to claim that the Greek and Maori passages differ in tone and coloring; but it remains true that a captive woman of any race will feel much the same as a captive woman of any other race when her thoughts turn toward home, and that the poetry growing out of such a situation will be everywhere of the same general pattern.