A Patriotic Song.

This ancient appeal to the Maori gods was chanted as a Kingite war-song in the Sixties, and it is still to be heard at political meetings in the Waikato:

Ka ngapu te whenua,
Ka haere nga tangata ki whea?
E Ruaimoko!
Purutia!
Tawhia!
Kia ita!
A-a-a ita!
Kia mau, kia mau!

The land is slipping away;
Where shall man find an abiding-place?
O Ruaimoko!
(God of the under-world)
Hold fast our lands!
Bind, tightly bind!
Be firm, be firm,
Nor let them from our grasp be torn.