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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 11 (February 1, 1935)

The Wisdom of the Maori

page 45

The Wisdom of the Maori

The Maori Tongue.

The Governor-General of the Dominion, whose sojourn with us, unfortunately, is nearing its end, has never tired of urging the preservation of the Maori language and traditions and customs unspoiled by pakeha contacts. I hope that Lord Bledisloe's wise counsel will bear fruit; the cause needs a voice of great mana, for the influences operating for the degeneration of the pure Maori tongue are strong. Popular usage among the natives of the younger generation has debased the good coinage in words, and the conversation of the people is full of pidgin-English and pidgin-Maori expressions which are quite unnecessary, because there are quite suitable pure Maori words as equivalents. Examples: There is an often-chanted poetic lament in which the word “huri” occurs, meaning to revolve or circle, in reference to the Southern Cross constellation, Maahutonga. But the Maori of to-day must improve on this by substituting for “huri” the English word “round,” Maorified into “rauna,” so corrupting an ancient song. Another example noticed often in Maori speech and writing is “heeki,” the native pronunciation of the word egg. The correct Maori for egg is “hua-manu,” literally “bird-fruit.” (“Hua-rakau” is “tree-fruit.”) There is a genuine Maori word for a knife or other cutting instrument, “maripi,” but the modern Maori and the younger generation of interpreters as often as not make it “naihi.” There are many hundreds of such examples of mingled slackness and ignorance. The correct use of the language should be taught in the native schools.

A Mokoia Memory.

At the same time there are a great many introduced words which have no exact equivalent in Maori, and it is necessary to dress some of these English words in a Maori mat. Some pakeha-Maori words have a curious history. I shall instance just one.

Many years ago, when I was visiting some old Maoris on Mokoia Island, Rotorua, one of them chanced to mention the “toronaihi,” which he said were making raids on his maize patch with disastrous results to the young growing kaanga. Enquiries elicited the explanation that the “toronaihi” were mice, which were a plague on the island at the time. I went into the history of the word with old Tamati Hapimana, and discovered that the sharp-toothed little raiders, which were not known in New Zealand before the pakeha came, were likened to the “draw-knife” of the coast whalers, the sharp instrument used for slicing up the blubber. A sickle was also called “toronaihi.” An interesting philological pedigree and migration from the whaleship and the longshore whaling station to the Maori wheat-growers' harvest field and then to the island sanctuary of the Arawa, with the first mice, stowaways in some lake canoe. I like “toronaihi,” with its three-fold significance.

Stories in Names, and Pureora Mountain.

I have discoursed in previous numbers of the “Railways Magazine” on the history, adventure, poetry and romance often embodied in a Maori place name. I shall take just one more for the present; the subject is one of endless charm for an investigator. One should never take the origin and significance of names for granted; the popular notion of their meaning is often as erroneous as the popular pakeha pronunciation.

Pureora is a particularly interesting name, to which a long chapter of tradition belongs. The peak of this name is the highest mountain in the King Country, and a famous place in the annals of the Ngati-Maniapoto tribe and their neighbours. Its full name, as the word-of-mouth historians of the tribe told me, is Te Pure-ora-o-Kahurere, and it was so named six hundred years ago by Rakataura, the tohunga, who was one of the chiefs in the canoe Tainui from Hawaiki.

Rakataura and his wife, who was the daughter of the commander of the Tainui, the chief Hoturoa, set out from Kawhia Harbour and explored the interior, with a small party of followers. They named many places and took stock of the fertility and the wild foods of the land, especially the birds which swarmed in vast numbers in the great forest. On the slopes of the highest mountain, in the region that is now the King Country, Kahurere was taken very ill, and the party remained in camp there for many days. Rakataura recited his prayers for her recovery; he kindled a sacred fire, and the food cooked therein was ceremoniously eaten, with many rites. This was the ceremony called “pure” (pronounced poo-ray) designed to remove evil spells, witchcraft and other mysterious ills.

The wife recovered, and the tohunga named the mountain Pure-ora-o-Kahurere, signifying the sacred rite which restored the health (ora) of Kahurere.

But it is significant also that Pureora is the name of a mountain in Tahiti, the island from which the Tainui came. The coincidence is rather remarkable; no doubt Rakataura, the explorer, had that sacred height in his mind when he named the mountain in the new land, after the restoration of his wife to bush-travelling form again.

“Ka mate, Ka mate!”

No chant in the Maori tongue is more often sung—or murdered when the pakeha attempts it—than the song of welcome and peacemaking which begins “Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora!” (“It is death, it is death!—no, it is life, it is life!”). It was shouted with great gusto in the Maori greeting to the Duke of Gloucester at Rotorua. It is one of the oft-quoted specimens of native song-making given in a recently published book, “Maori Music, with its Polynesian Background,” in which its origin is attributed to the great warrior Te Rauparaha, on an occasion when he was hiding from his enemies. There is no good Maori authority for this story.

The fact is that “Ka mate, ka mate,” and the rest of it is a very old chant, long antedating Te Rauparaha's period. It goes back several centuries, and it is only the concluding portion of an ancient song of reunion and felicitation, often chanted at occasions of peace-making and such gatherings as marriage feasts. The song, as it is popularly given to-day, is six or seven lines from the whole chant, which is much longer. If Te Rauparaha used it, he was quoting this fitting final bit; he was not the composer thereof. I have the complete chant, as given me by a chief and tohunga of the old generation many years ago. However, the last rhythmic chorus is about as much as the pakeha and the modern Maori can manage, and it certainly makes a good rousing haka shout, which strangers are apt to imagine must be something exceedingly belligerent and savage.