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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 8 (November 1, 1934)

The Wisdom of the Maori

page 34

The Wisdom of the Maori

The Maori Poet.

For many a year I have noted down from the lips of the older generation of Maoris the chants and songs which form so great a portion of the mental treasury of the race, and have often marvelled at the great memorising powers of the men and women whose minds are heir libraries. One old friend of mine who has departed to the Reinga, told me that he knew about four hundred songs, ranging from joyful haka songs, love ditties, war chants, canoe songs, and so on to the laments for the dead, which formed the largest section of his repertoire. Moreover, as became a man who was the descendant of a long line of tohungas and sacred high chiefs, he could explain the inner meaning of the ancient incantations, which was more than most of his contemporaries could do. They might be able to recite the chants, but they were not instructed as to their real significance; so many of the mythological allusions were recondite and unknown to most Maoris.

The most successful pakeha translator of Maori songs in the days of the past was Mr. C. O. Davis, who has given many examples in his book, “Maori Mementos,” a rare little publication now much sought after by collectors. This book, published in Auckland in 1855, contains, besides the poetical addresses of farewell presented by various tribes to Sir George Grey in 1853, when he was leaving New Zealand for Cape Colony, a collection of tangi chants and other songs made by Mr. Davis, chiefly among the North Auckland and Waikato Maoris. A few extracts from these happily translated poems I shall give here as examples of the depth of feeling and the rich imagery contained in the literature of the most gifted and intellectual of primitive peoples.

To the Departing Governor.

From the chief Patuone's farewell to Governor Grey:

“Ye wintry winds that sweep amain
Ye pierce me sore;
Cease while I scale Tapeka's Cape,
Perchance my friend is still in sight,
And waits for me.
I saw him last upon the steep
That surges lave;
But now there's nought upon the deep
But one wide wave.”

For the Illustrious Dead.

The great lament composed by the chief Te Heuheu Iwikau for his brother the famous Heuheu, overwhelmed in the landslip at Te Rapa, Taupo, in 1846, begins with this beautiful figure:

“See o'er the heights of dark Tauhara's Mount The infant morning wakes. Perhaps my friend Returns to me, clothed in that lightsome cloud. Alas! I toil alone in this dark world!”

Another lament is a chant composed by Papahia, the principal chief of the Rarawa tribe, of the northern Hokianga country:

“Behold the lightning's glare!
it seems to cut asunder Tuwhare's rugged mountain.
From thy hand the weapon dropped, And thy spirit disappeared Beyond the heights of Raukawa.
The sun grows dim and hastes away
As a woman from the scene of battle.
The tides of the ocean weep as they ebb and flow,
And the mountains of the south melt away;
For the spirit of the chieftain
Is taking its flight to Rona.”

Like to a Star the Maid Beloved.

This is part of a song of grief composed by an aged woman of Hokianga for her relative Ngaro, a girl who died in the pride and beauty of her youth:

“The evening star is waning. It disappears
To rise in brighter skies,
Where thousands wait to greet it.
All that is great and beautiful
I heed not now;
Thou wert my only treasure.
The people still assemble
At their feast of pleasure;
The canoe still cuts the wind in twain
And scatters the sea foam;
Still the sea-birds, like a cloud,
Darken the sky, hovering o'er the crags—
But the loved one comes no more.”

The Flight of the Albatross.

In a like vein the wife of Hori Kerei Takiwaru composed her sad farewell to her chieftain husband:

“… The winds sweep o'er the mount of Mangere,
But he is borne away by the airs of the sea—
My beloved! Beautiful to look upon
Even as a great-winged albatross
Takes his flight towards the western sky.
My choicest feather that adorned my brow
Is wafted from me.”

* * *

The Greenstone Canoe.

Mt. Rolleston, the grand icy peak dominating the Otira region, is Te Tara-a-Tama-ahua. Tara means a mountain peak; Tama-ahua is referred to presently.

Many years ago, down on the West Coast, the Arahura Maoris—only a handful of them survived—told me some curious ancient legends concerning the pounamu or greenstone, and its discovery by their ancestors. They said that some miles up the Arahura River, if I cared to explore that far, I would be able to see the Ika-a-Poutini, which was a canoe turned into greenstone. “If you stoop down by the river's side at a certain place,” said Meihana, “and dip your head until your eyes are beneath the surface of the water, you may see the canoe of pounamu, stretching across the riverbed, with three knobs upstanding, like erect human figures. The crew are seated in their places, with their paddles in their hands.”

I never had an opportunity of testing for myself the authenticity of this bit of geological folk-lore, but I learned from one of the pioneer surveyors that there was undoubtedly a ledge of greenstone stretching across the Arahura River near a waterfall, and that it was from this ledge that the blocks and fragments of pounamu frequently found further down the river had come, broken off in times of heavy flood by the rolling boulders.

In another local legend, which links up with the Ika-a-Poutini tale, the Maoris explain that the three figures upstanding, silent petrified forms, in this canoe, were the three wives of the long-ago sailor explorer Tama-ahua; their names were Hine-Kawakawa, Hine-Aotea, and Hine-Kahurangi. (The names symbolise three of the varieties of green-stone.) They had been transformed into pounamu by the gods in punishment of Tama for slaying his slave, Tuhua. This is a story in itself, the legend of how the servant committed a breach of the tapu custom when engaged in cooking birds for his chief. He licked his fingers, a serious infringement of tapu, under the circumstances, and Tama, observing this, was so angry that he killed Tuhua with his stone club. For this the gods punished Tama by causing the land to swell up suddenly under his feet and form a mountain, and by petrifying his three wives in the canoe below. The mountain is called Tuhua to this day; it is yonder height overlooking Lake Kanieri. From the top of the magic hill Tama descended to the river, but only to find his canoe and his wives all fixed for ever in stony death. And there is the canoe to-day, or some of it, if you can contrive to find the spot, close to the waterfall in the Arahura's course.

No doubt some exploring canoe of long ago came to grief in the rapid Arahura, and that fact and the pounamu found there formed sufficient groundwork for the imaginative Maori legend-makers.

page 35